


A Path Forward

by Namesonboats (Viken2592)



Series: Paths [2]
Category: Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order (Video Game)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst with a Happy Ending, Animal Death, Author loves BD-1, Canon-Typical Violence, Dathomirian Insults, F/M, Falling In Love, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Insert The Imperial March, Mantis Crew, Post-Game(s), Rated For Violence, Searching for a legacy, Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order Spoilers, Wookiee Roars, pew pew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:07:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 36,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23461480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viken2592/pseuds/Namesonboats
Summary: 14 BBY. Cal has destroyed the Holocron with the map locating the Force-sensitive children, but the crew of the Mantis still needs to evade the Empire. Merrin embarks on her journey fighting by Cal’s side, trying to understand her place in the Galaxy. Throughout their travels, visiting planets and helping others, Cal seeks to understand what it means to be Jedi without the Order. When their feelings for each other deepen, both need to face the meaning of their respective legacy. Can Cal and Merrin stay together, or will their paths ultimately diverge?
Relationships: Cal Kestis/Merrin
Series: Paths [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2045972
Comments: 133
Kudos: 165





	1. The crew of the Stinger Mantis

**Author's Note:**

> A fic to channel how much I love these characters! English is not my first language. All mistakes are my own. I hope you enjoy :)

14 BBY

Merrin steps out from the small chamber at the back of the Mantis and halts at a hushed conversation below. Cal and Cere are by the sofa, their faces mirroring a certain expression that tells Merrin it is not a good time to interrupt. Her ears prick at the utterance of the Force - a concept mentioned by Malicos so often she learned to hate it like she learned to hate everything about him and the Jedi Order.

“I need to cut myself off from the Force again.”

Merrin peeks out from her hiding behind the door frame and catches the sight of Cere lifting an unsmiling gaze to Cal.

“You heard what the Sith in the fortress on Nur said. I have so much hate in me, so much anger. He was right; I would make an excellent inquisitor. I can’t let that happen.”

“Do whatever you think is best,” Cal says, “but you have so much more than anger inside. I believe in you.”

A sensation of warmth flows through Merrin at the kindness in Cal’s voice. She imagines Cere’s smile in the brief silence that ensues.

Cal is so different from everyone Merrin’s ever met. Twice, she’s witnessed him refuse offers of power; first on Dathomir, facing Malicos, and second inside this ship, destroying the Holocron.

Sinking her gaze to her wrist, a faint glitter still rests on the fabric on Merrin’s arm from the sliced-apart Holocron. The silence that reigned in the ship after Cal sliced it through with his lightsaber, sending green particles raining over the Durasteel floor, still rings in her head. He asked “so where to now?” in such a casual manner, as if destroying the Holocron - and thus choosing to never step on the path of finding the force-sensitive children - was a mundane act.

At that moment, deep respect overcame her. Merrin sensed the destruction of the Holocron was the right thing to do, despite Cere’s conviction of its promise to rebuild the Jedi Order - like leaving Dathomir to join him was the right thing to do. Merrin hasn’t regretted her decision to join Cal for a second and for every act of compassion he displays, her conviction grows stronger.

“Cal,” Cere says with a weight to her voice that has Merrin go still. “That man in the Fortress. I don’t think he is just another inquisitor. He was the dark shadow I told you about before, the one who tortured me until I snapped.”

A worried beep erupts from BD-1; Merrin leans in a little closer.

Cal speaks in a mix of concern and awe.

“Who is he? I’ve never felt anyone command the Force like that. Not even master Tapal wielded that kind of power.”

A flump sound tells Merrin Cere has sunk onto the sofa, a sigh escaping her lips. It’s time to stop eavesdropping. Carefully, Merrin slinks out of the corridor and passes Greez’ terrarium to make her presence known.

Cal’s eyes light up with a smile that prompts her to smile in return. Merrin has never smiled much in her life; after meeting him, the corners of her lips lift more often than not.

Cere observes her in her heavy-lidded fashion, nodding in acceptance of the interruption.

“You deserve to be part of this conversation, Merrin, since you saved us out there. I will never be able to thank you enough. Without you…”

Merrin sits by Cere.

“I am glad I have earned your trust.”

“You have.”

Cal takes a seat on Cere’s other side, shifting to make room for BD-1 who emits a happy trill.

Cere’s gaze wanders from the young Jedi to the Nightsister and back.

“Whatever his name, it’s obvious the man with the dark mask is a very powerful Sith lord. My bet is that he’s working directly under the Emperor. He might even have been a Jedi once, like Trilla… Like many others who were captured during the purge. ”

She closes her eyes and shakes her head.

“I regret that I couldn’t tear Trilla from his grasp.” Cere heaves her chest in a heavy sigh. “Avenge us, she said. If I only knew how, facing such an enemy.”

Cal stares into the air in a thoughtful expression, elbows on his knees.

“When we fought him, for a moment I… felt a hole in him. A hollow of pain.”

“I felt it too.”

Cal and Cere snap their gazes at Merrin. BD-1 emits a curious beep.

“When I found you in the waters. I sensed him. He radiated so much rage, but underneath it, there was an undercurrent of pain. Of loss.”

Cal stares at her, nodding slowly with closed lips.

“Cal.” Cere holds Cal’s gaze. “Whatever he radiates, he is still a threat. He knows you’re a Jedi, and he probably thinks you have the Holocron intact. He will hunt you - of that, we can be sure.”

“Hey.” All turn their heads to the direction of the cockpit as Greez, his voice raspy from sleep, enters the galley. “You’re all up? I thought you’d hit the sacks.”

Greez raises his four hands in a 'what’s going on?'- motion at his motley crew.

“Are we still debating where to go now that we don’t have the Empire breathing down our necks?”

“Actually,” Cere says, “it’s likely the Empire still thinks we have the Holocron, and they will pursue us for it. However,” she sends an eye cast to Merrin, “thanks to Merrin, they don’t know what our ship looks like.”

Greez scratches at the back of his neck.

“Yeah... I guess the Haxion Brood might send out more bounty hunters after Cal. Heh…” Greez attempt at a smile stiffens to a grimace as no one replies to his musings. “We need to refuel the Mantis, and although I’m not too happy about it, Cal’s earlier idea of giving her a repaint can’t hurt if we want to be absolutely sure they won’t recognize us.”

He turns to face the holo table and turns it on. A series of planets appear in a low buzz, signifying the places where they travelled to find the Astrium and later, the Holocron. Greez twists a button and huffs at how the holo buzzes and tunes out. With a bang on the table and a curse, Greez opens a map of nearby planets, the image flickering before it stabilizes.

“Here,” he points at a small planet appearing in a yellow tint, “we’re in the western reaches of the Galaxy’s inner rim. This planet makes a good hideout for a few days to get the paint job done and for filling up the tank before we head out further.”

He turns his gaze to Cal.

“You know my vote is on the outer rim. The Empire can’t find us there; it’d be like searching for a needle in a stack of Wookiee hair.”

Cal approaches the holo of the desert planet Greez’ indicating at.

“Jakku?”

“Yeah,” Greez tilts his head, “you’ve heard of it?”

“No.”

“That’s because nobody has!” Greez grins and lifts his hands. “It’s perfect!”

Cal directs a quizzing gaze to Cere and Merrin with a shrug and an expression of 'what do you think?'

Merrin replies with a shrug in turn. Why not?

“Fine,” Cere says, “refuelling and repainting the Mantis is our first priority. We also need more supplies. Then, we have some planning to do. There are a lot of possible paths to take, and I suggest you take your time to make priorities.”

Her gaze is fastened on Cal. He nods. BD-1 beeps in affirmation.

“It’s settled!” Greez switches the holo table off with a hum. “Now get some rest, you guys. It’s been a long day.”

On his way to his pilot’s seat, Greez halts, furrowing his bushy eyebrows.

“I’m still finding weird-looking bits of fur all over my ship, and my stack of Jun seeds are almost depleted. When we get to Jakku, I’m going to find our secret extra passenger, mark my words.”

He points an index finger at his crew members before turning towards the cockpit with a mutter.

* * *

An hour later, Merrin peeks out from the corridor to the galley for a second time that evening. The Mantis rushes through space, bobbing gently on the hyper lane, it’s many panels and lights blinking softly. Walking on eggshells towards the sofa where Cal lays underneath a plaid, Merrin has a feeling of being swallowed by the stars.

When she joined the crew, Cal gave up his small chamber by the meditation spot for her to sleep in. It was another kind act that added to the puzzle she slowly built of his character, a puzzle that formed an evermore confusing yet alluring image.

Cal lifts his head when she approaches. He sits, pushing the blanket from his lap.

“Can’t sleep?”

She shakes her head, joining him on the sofa. BD-1 whistles a single tone and lights his camera eye in a blue light over Cal’s arm.

“It’s ok buddy, go back to sleep,” Cal says softly. BD-1’s eye goes black. He slumps by Cal’s side, a red light slowly pulsing on his head.

Merrin meets Cal’s gaze with the question she’s wanted to ask since that morning burning on the tip of her tongue.

“Why did you destroy the Holocron?”

He doesn’t answer immediately. A wrinkle appears between his eyebrows.

“When I entered the ancient vault on Bogano after you joined us, I had a vision.”

Merrill holds her breath not to miss a syllable of his words.

“First, I saw a Zeffo sage. He spoke about the pride of the Zeffo, of how dogma blinded them to the path of balance. ‘The greater control we sought, the further we fell into ruin’, he said. Then… I saw myself, finding the force-sensitive children and teaching them the ways of the Force.”

Cal rolls his hand to a fist on his thigh.

“The Empire found us. They murdered and imprisoned the padawans. I saw myself as an inquisitor. The rest you know. I resurfaced from the vision by Trilla who stole the Holocron.”

The horror of the vision Cal has shared prompts them to sit a few moments in silence. Merrin has an impulse to reach for his hand but doesn’t, unsure if the gesture would be considered rude.

“Wisdom may be gained from pain if you acknowledge your part in sustaining it.”

Cal has a naked look in his eyes. Merrin wishes she possessed better words, better ways of consoling him than to offer Dathomirian proverbs.

“You were brave for destroying the Holocron,” she says, holding his gaze.

“You said something before I ventured into the vault,” Cal says. “‘If you take those children from their homes and train them as Jedi, won’t they be hunted like you?’ I think I answered something evasive but in truth, you had me speechless. I was so sure of the necessity of our path, of finding those kids and resurrecting the Order. It’s what Cordova wanted - so how could it be wrong?”

“Perhaps one day, the Jedi Order will be restored,” she says in an attempt to show compassion.

“Yes.” Cal nods. “Maybe. But I saw what would happen if I tried to do it now. The return of the Jedi would be further away than ever.

Merrin lets a few heartbeats of silence reign after such a weighty confession. She directs her gaze to the holo table.

“We can still fight the Empire.”

Their eyes meet.

“Yeah,” Cal says, “I know it’s why you joined me. Or - do you want to return to Dathomir?”

A faint chill runs down Merrin’s arms.

“No. I want to fight with you. On Dathomir, all I could do was wait. I understand now, my existence there was a bit… limited.”

Cal nods with a smile.

“Let’s start with a bit of camouflage work on that desert planet Greez showed us. We’ll take it from there. Make some plans.”

“Make some plans. Sounds good.”

She stands, knowing she’ll sleep like a baby after their conversation.

“Good night, Cal.”

“Good night, Merrin.”

BD-1 beeps in a sing-song sound.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Jun seeds](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jun_\(crop\))


	2. Jakku

Merrin plants her feet onto the sand of Jakku, shifting to get used to the spongy sensation. Billowing waves of heat dances over the ground and a distinct scent of warm engine turbines fill her nose. She pulls her hood over her head against the blaring sun and swallows thickly, peering on the settlement a few hundred meters away from where they’ve landed.

Cere descends the Mantis, lifting a hand to shade her eyes.

“So this is Jakku.”

She glances at Merrin.

“Are you ok? Stepping out of a ship after a few days through hyperspace can be rough, especially for someone who’s not used to travelling.”

Merrin hums. She’s taking in the energies of the planet. Jakku is largely dormant; its energies sleep somewhere she can’t reach them. She’s unsure if the planet waits for a time to change, evolve, or if it exists as a mere contour of something it once was.

Cal appears, wearing a shawl to protect his head from the sun, BD-1 habitually placed on his shoulders. He hands Merrin a flask, cool to the touch and moist with condensed pearls of water.

“Here.”

She accepts and takes a sip. The refrigerated liquid lands like a breath of fresh air in her stomach and disperses her faint nausea.

“Thank you.”

“No problem.”

She returns him the flask, pulling at her hood again to hide the warmth on her cheeks.

The bodily reactions she had to Cal’s acts of kindness were confusing, but not unpleasant. During the two standard days it took them to reach Jakku, they spend time together, socialising. He taught her the basics of a holo game called Dejarik, conversed about innocuous things such as how he found the plants in the terrarium, and showed her how to brew a bitter but invigorating beverage called caf. When she retreated to the small chamber behind the meditation spot to get some rest, he didn't disturb but allowed her solitude in a way that gave her a comforting sense of acceptance.

Greez still circled her in tentative caution but joined in the tournaments of Dejarik with zeal. Cere gave her a brief lecture on the rise of the Empire, and her reasons for finding Cal. Other than that, she mostly kept to herself, meditating in the cockpit, the light of the rushing stars outside coloring her face in billowing stripes.

As new as Merrin’s situation was, it left her wanting to learn and understand more.

Especially to know Cal better.

A crash and a shout from inside the Mantis have the three-fourth of her crew turn in wide-eyed surprise.

“Got you!”

Something small and orange bolts out of the ship, squeaking in fear at the pursuing Greez who rushes after, a saucepan in hand. Circling the legs of Cal and Cere, a fluffy animal jumps into Merrin’s arms while BD-1 emits a series of confused blips and beeps. Merrin catches the creature in a reflex, blinking.

It’s a Bogano bogling. Its whiskers tremble with fear and its large eyes gleam as it presses against Merrin in an attempt to escape its tormentor.

“Aha!” Greez shouts in triumph. He strides towards Merrin in determined steps, all four hands outstretched. “Give that to me! It’s going to pay for all the seeds it’s been stealing!”

“Greez, wait.”

Cal extends a hand, smiling at the animal that presses close to Merrin’s heart. She closes her arms around its silky fur, surprise still ringing in her.

Greez lets the saucepan sink and points his index finger at Cal and Merrin respectively.

“Oh no. Don’t tell me you wanna take care of that vermin! It eats our supplies and shits all over my ship! Not to mention all the bits of fur it’s been leaving in my drawer! I can’t sleep for the rash I’ve gotten from that lousy thing!”

Merrin strokes the fur of the bogling. It meets her gaze with a squeak, wiggling its tail.

“It looks like someone’s got a new friend,” Cal says.

Cere crosses her arms on her chest, an eyebrow raised in amusement.

“Whatever we do, we can’t release it on a desert planet. It would die before sunset.”

“Sure we can!” Greez says with a sinister grin. “Or we could eat it. I bet boglings taste great!”

The animal shrieks.

“Merrin, what do you want to do?” Cal asks.

“I -”

The bogling climbs onto her shoulders, purring against her neck.

“I suppose it could come with us, if it wishes to.”

The bogling yips in an affirmative sound. Greez scowls, a proverbial thundercloud looming over his head. He throws his hands in the air in a disgusted, yet defeated scoff.

“I’m starting to think you guys are the punishment for my sins. Alright, take the thing with you, but until it learns to do its business properly, it’s not setting foot on my ship again!”

Cal hides his laughter in a pretend throat clearing. Cere wraps a shawl over her head and gives them all an eye cast that prompts them to listen.

“We have work to do. Greez and I will take care of the fuel and repaint. Cal, you and Merrin take the rest of our credits and find supplies. Water is our top priority, although we need as many rations as we can afford. Be on the lookout for Imperial troops.”

“Alright.” Cal catches Merrin’s gaze and nods towards the settlement. The bogling jumps from her shoulder and skip at their feet as they leave the Mantis.

Shadowing her eyes with her hand, Merrin gazes over the rectangular edifices that shoot up from the ground of the settlement. The small number of houses are barely enough to call it a town. Exposed pipes and turbines reflect the rays of the sun that bounces off an arched metal structure built for storing large mining equipment and scattered concrete pillars supports copper-tinted roofs that shade various people selling wares, haggling prices for foodstuffs, water, and trinkets. Racks of metal beams line up by the small marketplace for drying meat and furs, adding to the structure of various tents and poles that jut from the ground with attached fabric to form roofs against the scorching sun.

Her ears pick up the sound of at least two unknown languages, and she needs to keep her gaze straight not to stare at species of humanoids she’s never encountered before. A woman with an elongated face and a fleshy nose grabs at the bogling who’s sniffing at a crate by her side, sending the poor animal yipping onto Merrin’s shoulders. BD-1 beeps a high-resonant tone that has the Abenedo show her teeth, but the little droid forgets the insult and whoops at a passing servant droid exclaiming a chatter of monotonous droidspeak.

At the sight of a Human girl running between the stands, Merrin stops flat. She’s not seen children since she was a child herself. Dathomir was a child-less planet.

Childless planets were soon dead planets.

“There.” She wakes from her reverie when Cal points at a bearded merchant in a round hat and a red tunic standing inside a rations stand. “We can probably get what we need from that guy.”

The merchant’s face lights up in a sharp-toothed grin as Cal and Merrin approach his stand, eyeing them as if they were well-cooked steak.

“Ah, newcomers,” he says and grazes his palms together, “what brings you to Jakku and to Cratertown?”

“No different reason than most travellers that come by this place,” Cal says, eyeing the heap of lyophilised rations and plastic tanks filled with water.

The merchant laughs in response.

“A good answer, my friend! Now, what can I get you and your beautiful Zabrak wife?”

Merrin raises her eyebrows. To her fascination, Cal’s face blaze red like the soils of Dathomir.

“We’re not - it doesn’t matter. We are here to restock our supplies on foodstuff and water. What can you give me for 200 credits?”

The merchant strokes his beard, leaning forwards with one hand behind his back.

“Ah, my friend - these are Republican credits. I only accept Imperial credits - but,” he adds, eyes shining at Cal’s dogged expression, “I’ll make an exception for you. I can give you 20 rations and a volume of freshwater. What do you say?”

Cal squints.

“20 rations and a volume of water will last us less than a standard week.”

“I guess you should have thought of that before you walked into this settlement with obsolete money.”

The cruel tone of the merchant’s reply sends a spark of anger through Merrin. She lifts her hands to her necklace, nudging the bogling to jump off her shoulders to allow her to reach behind her neck and unhook the clasps. The gold of the composite triangles flash in the sun and sends a yellow prism on the ground.

The necklace was her birth gift from Mother. On Dathomir, it signified her status. She was not on Dathomir anymore.

_Survivors. We adapt._

“How much for this?”

The eyes of the merchant lit up in a greedy smile. Cal stops her hand that holds the necklace outstretched, searching for her gaze with a wrinkle of worry between his eyes.

“Merrin, no. You shouldn’t have to do this.”

“We need supplies, no? We cannot eat gold. This will help us, I am sure.”

“Indeed it will,” the merchant mutters, reaching for the necklace. Merrin closes her hand in a snap.

“How much?”

The merchant strokes his beard again, eyeing the roof of his tent.

“How about... 100 rations and six volumes of water?”

“120 rations and eight volumes.”

“110 and seven, and I will deliver the wares to your ship free of charge.”

“Deal.”

Cal’s gaze wanders from Merrin to the merchant as they shake hands. The necklace switches owner.

“Hey,” he says softly when the merchant turns his back to shout orders at a small worker droid, “that was a really nice thing to do.” BD-1 whistles from Cal’s shoulders.

Merrin glints a smile, filled with a sensation that she’s gulped a hot beverage.

As Cal gives the merchant instructions to find the Mantis, Merrin peers around for the absent bogling. She frowns at the sight of its orange fur by the end of the marketplace, sniffing in the air with its tail erect.

Why didn’t she give the animal to Greez to be cooked or cast out? On Dathomir, mercy against thieving animals was considered a weakness, and Nightsisters were never weak. Something in the gleam of its large eyes made it impossible to refuse its wordless plea for help... Merrin sighs and traipses towards the bogling. Perhaps leaving her home planet had made her go a little nonsensical.

“You’d better stay close to us,” she says at the animal that’s still sniffing the air as if sensing a curious odour, “you are far away from home, and nobody knows what -”

Her words die in her throat. Her ears pick up a faint song carried by the wind, rising and falling like the waters of the underground pools on her home planet. The hair on her arms stands on end. She gazes on the horizon that shivers in the heat, trying to determine the direction of the tune.

BD-1 emits a quizzing beep behind her back. She turns to Cal who’s approaching with a curious expression.

“Cal. This planet - it sings.”

He blinks with a frown.

“Sings?”

“Yes. Close your eyes. Can you hear it?”

Cal inhales and closes his eyes. BD-1’s camera eye lens focuses on his face. After a moment’s concentration, Cal opens his eyes again, shaking his head.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Merrin frowns. The song is still resonating, beckoning her…

“Wait.” Cal squints, gazing over the desert plain. “You’re right…”

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we should head back to the Mantis.”

The bogling jumps onto Merrin’s arm and settles on her shoulders. She caresses its tail absentmindedly and nods, joining Cal in the direction of their ship.

* * *

By the Mantis, two masked carriers have arrived with the supplies. Greez reels off a litany of instructions and threats that he’ll ‘tan their hides if they scrape the hull with their stair trailers’ before he rushes off to check the mechanical droids fueling the ship by the starboard fin.

“Hey, there you are!” Greez grins at Cal and Merrin approaching and wipes the sweat from his forehead, “great job getting two months worth of supplies with that amount of credit! Didn’t know haggling was a Jedi talent!”

“Greez,” Cal hisses, looking around, “you can’t use that word.”

“Ah, yeah,” Greez says with a remorseful look in his eyes, “sorry.”

Cal glances at Merrin, “Besides, I didn’t -”

“Cal did a great job finding supplies,” Merrin keeps her features unmoved. “What about you? Did you have a successful forenoon?”

Greez shrugs and scratches his sideburn.

“Well, it’d be too much to expect good service on a desert planet unknown to practically the rest of the entire galaxy, but yeah, I guess it was alright!”

He sends Cal a pointed eye cast.

“Did you have to find _yellow_ paint for my ship? Why not green? Or pink! That would have been nice.”

“Sorry, Greez.” Cal smiles, looking anything but sorry.

“Yeah, yeah… The vermin’s still with you?”

The bogling yips from behind Merrin’s calves.

Greez glares at the animal.

“Do your business under my seat again, and I’m using your hide to make two nice pairs of gloves!”

The bogling presses it’s stomach to the ground, whimpering.

Cere exits the back cargo door of the Mantis, passing the men carrying water volumes into the hull.

“I think I have a solution for that.”

She arrives by the others, lifting a rectangular plastic container in her hands.

“Back on Coruscant, a lot of people had pet loth-cats. They trained them to do “their business” inside these boxes, filled with sand. If our little guest can agree to that procedure -”

The bogling jumps in a circle, panting.

“- You won’t have to worry about stepping your foot in anything unwanted.”

Greez hmpf’s, frowning.

“I deserve a glass of knock-back nectar after this. Hey!” He stiffens at the sight of the men in helmets pushing crates of foodstuff up the jetty of the Mantis. “Watch out for that stabilizer cable! Have you never loaded an S-161 Stinger XL Luxury yacht before!?”

Greez rushes towards the cargo door. Cere turns to Cal and Merrin with a look of amusement. She searches her satchel and fishes out two black goggles that she hands her younger crew members.

“Take these. They will be crucial if you wish to spend more time outside during daylight. The sun on this planet is very unforgiving.”

Cal and Merrin accept the goggles, turning them in their hands. BD-1 does a series of thrills.

“Yeah?” Cal says to his droid, “you think I’ll look good in them?”

He puts his goggles on with a smile. Merrin does the same. Her world gains a darker shade that softens the edges of the ship, people, and settlement. It’s like a cool draught for her thirsty eyes. Pulling the goggles off, she nods in gratitude to Cere.

“I don’t know what you did to get us this many supplies,” Cere says, eyeing Merrin, “but I can imagine. Thank you. I suggest you two take the rest of the time to relax, meditate, perhaps even do some sightseeing - if you keep a watchful eye out for stormtroopers.”

“You don’t need us for the repaint?”

“I don’t think Greez can take the stress of supervising more people manhandling his precious ship,” Cere raises an eyebrow to Cal. “He’ll have his hands full with the droids we hired to do the job.”

As soon as Cere disappears inside the Mantis, Cal takes a step closer to Merrin, speaking low.

“How about we go check out that noise we heard - the song? It can’t be far.”

She frowns despite the eager flash of interest in her.

“How?”

Cal opens his hand to reveal the remaining Republican credits.

“I bet I can get us something with these.”

* * *

A standard hour later, bellies filled with nourishment and their satchels packed with canisters of water, Cal and Merrin whoosh through the desert landscape on speeder bikes. Fountains of sand spray behind them by their repulsor engines. The muffled sound of the vehicles soars in their ears, covered by round helmets. Underneath the grey poncho Cal insisted she’d wear, Merrin keeps the bogling close on her lap. The animal occasionally peers out from the neckline with a snort, only to bury herself deeper inside the poncho.

Cal rushes past with a large grin on his face. Strapped to his midriff by a belt, BD-1 shrieks and blinks his panel in a haphazard pattern. Merrin squeezes the accelerator and dashes past their speeder, engine roaring and triumphant laughter bubbling in her stomach.

When was the last time she felt this exhilarated? Perhaps not since that day she, at twelve years old, learned how to teleport and apparated around the cliffs of Dathomir with a dizzying feeling of being invincible.

The landscape around them grows stabler, from predominant rolling dunescapes to cliffs and spurs of rocks protruding from the ground like the spines of great beasts. The song resonates in the back of her mind - not louder - but less hazy than in the settlement. They are approaching the place from where it emanates.

Merrin gestures to Cal. He drives his speeder towards a cliff where the winds have carved out a natural parapet hanging above, shielding them from the sun that, although not blaring as strongly at this hour as in high noon, still scorches the sands below.

Merrin parks her speeder next to Cal’s and takes her helmet off, wiping her brow from sweat.

“According to the map,” he says, “this is the Plaintive hand plateau. We’re close, but - there’s nothing here.”

Squinting against the sun, they survey the barren landscape, empty of any eye-catching landmark. The squalling of a flying creature echoes above their heads.

A sudden shiver runs down Merrin’s back. From a dune not a hundred meters away, a gadget with a red, pulsing light rises. It immediately fires a series of blasts in their direction.

“Watch out!”

Cal tenses his muscles and crashes into Merrin. The bogling shrieks and jumps from her grasp, fleeing like an orange bolt of lightning between the cliffs. Cal and Merrin tumble on the warm sand, the air filled with the frizz of blasts hitting stone and BD-1’s panicked beeps. Raising their heads, they shield their eyes as one of the speeders explode from a well-aimed hit, pieces of steel and chrome raining through the air.

Cal extends a hand. Using the Force, he pushes the other speeder away from the onslaught of plasma beams and plants it inside a mound of sand.

After a few moments, where the blasting stop and the pounding of their hearts subdue, they raise to a crouching position on the sand.

“Seems like outsiders aren’t welcome here.”

Merrin lifts her hood over her head.

“Someone is guarding something in this place - most likely the thing that sings.”

They blink when a gust of wind blows a piece of the exploded speeder across the sands in front of their feet.

“The guy who leased us the speeders is not going to be happy,” Cal says in a sigh.

“Let’s worry about that later.” Merrin indicates by lifting her chin. “We need to get closer to the dune over there, where the red light came from.”

“I could reflect the blasts with my lightsaber.”

“There’s a better way.” Merrin digs her satchel for a jagged object - a talisman of Rancor bone from Dathomir. She extends her arm to Cal. “Take my hand.”

He takes it hesitantly but squeezes her palm. She closes her eyes and recites an incantation. Cal stares at his legs as a green shimmer slowly eats their limbs, rendering them invisible. BD-1 bleeps from his shoulder, also vanishing. Together, they stride towards the dune, leaving a trail of emerald smoke in their wake.

“This is amazing,” Cal whispers as they reach the sandy walls, suspiciously solid for a heap of sand. BD-1 beeps and sends out a strobe of light from his camera eye.

The door of a bunker, vast and filled with corridors that stretch far below their feet, rests behind the sand. When BD-1 extinguishes his camera, Cal and Merrin push the sands from the door, pausing occasionally for any red lights. In front of them appears a scan plate with a jumbled pattern, blinking in green and white. Cal presses the plate. Nothing happens.

“Let me.”

The door doesn’t budge. Before Merrin removes her hand from the plate, Cal places his hand against the slick surface beside hers, and with a murmur that shakes the sands beside them, the door slides open. They stare at each other with a spark of excitement in their eyes before peering inside.

A pentagonal room with a vaulted ceiling, supported by graceful columns of black glass, opens before them. The middle of the room bathes in a milky light that falls from a skylight of the roof. They enter carefully, keeping to the walls with all senses on alert. They reach the opposite hallway when footfalls echo through the opening. Pressing against the wall, Cal lifts his index finger to his mouth to silence BD-1’s low bleep.

The muffled voice of a stormtrooper reaches them from behind the bend.

“How long until Commander Rax is back from Coruscant?”

“A standard week, I think.”

The first trooper hums in response to his comrade. Their steps retreat further into the corridor. Cal carefully peeks into the passage and places a hand onto the hilt of his lightsaber; a rush of excitement soars through Merrin at the sight. She grabs her talisman, letting the cut bone sink into the soft flesh of her palm and silently begins an incantation.

“We can expect more than two if what they are guarding here is valuable,” Cal whispers. “Do you still want to do this?”

She nods.

“Let’s go.”

He ignites his lightsaber. The orange beam reflects a warm hue onto the burnished metal of the floor. She sinks into invisibility when he rushes into the corridor.

They catch the two first stormtroopers by surprise. Cal rushes the pair, slicing one trooper with his lightsaber and parrying a blow from the other, rolling over her back and piercing her with his blade. The corridor opens to a large octagonal room filled with blinking systems and computer screens glowing with rows of numbers, operated by several men who dash from their seats, firing blaster guns. A wide window spreads a curious light above the systems. Merrin tries to catch a glimpse of what’s beyond, but a group of troopers arriving from a right passage catches her attention. Her eyes shining green, she summons a pool of ichor beneath their feet that melts the chrome of their boots, making them skip and jump in agonizing roars. The air of the room fills with the whizz of blasts and the cries of stormtroopers and computer workers shot by bursts of their own guns, deflected by Cal’s lightsaber.

Merrin teleports to the other side of the room, summoning the shards of a cracked screen and forcing it through the chest of a trooper who falls to the ground. From another passage to their left, three probe droids hover closer, bleeping and firing red plasmablasts in shrill swishes.

“BD!” Cal shouts.

The little droid jumps from Cal’s shoulders onto the first of the attacking probe droids, intercepting its programming by cutting at its main cable repository with his extendable arm. The probe droids limbs tremble at the fizz of electric currents running before it turns to its companions, blasting one of them to the ground. The other falls from a deflected shot by Cal, chasing him while it’s malfunctioning cables spit sparks that explode in a stinging smoke.

Merrin’s magick is depleting. She’s shocked by how quickly it extinguishes in her veins compared to how long she sustains it on Dathomir. Four stormtroopers advance on her, separating to expose a fifth man in black armor, a purge trooper with an electro staff that’s sparkling with purple energy.

All troopers fall when Cal jumps amidst them and slams his hand into the ground, sending a powerful wave of the Force like an exploding halo around him. Before the troopers stand, he splits his saber in two and ignites both beams, hitting his enemies in a rotating motion.

Merrin senses he’s depleting his force abilities and sends him a mind blast in reflex, like she enhances the brother’s magick on Dathomir. Cal stares at his saber arm, surprised by the rush of power that hits him in a whiff of green light.

The purgetrooper gets on his feet on an instant.

“I always wanted to kill a Jedi.” His voice resonates in a metallic note from inside his helmet. He raises his staff to thrust it into Cal’s head but Cal parries the blow, stepping to the side to avoid another hit.

Worry dancing in her guts, Merrin summons another gust of ichor to explode the ground under Cal’s opponent, but halts.

Cal’s grown into his fighting style since she first met him on Dathomir. Back then, he fought with the hurried motions of someone not yet fully trained. Duelling the purgetrooper, his movements have gained an elegance through the non-aggressive, defensive pattern to his stance, parrying and dodging each hit by his opponent. The trooper taunts him for being cowardly until an opening reveals itself. A misstep from his enemy and Cal slices him in two from an elegant, upwards-facing blow.

When the dark trooper falls, they are alone in the octagonal room, the frizzes from malfunctioning computers echoing and sparks from a sliced cable skipping on the floor. BD-1 rushes one of the remaining computers with a thrill.

“Find something, buddy?”

BD-1 beeps in affirmation. He scans the screen with a beam from his camera eye.

Merrin places a hand on a column and peers through the arched window that stretches like the panel of a large ship before them. A yawning hole falls on the other side of the Duraglass, darkness extending to the innermost heart of the planet. The song hums in her head.

BD-1 extends the hidden arm in his body and ignites it, sending sparks flying onto the computer system.

With a blinking, a three-dimensional star map projects into the darkness of the void outside.

“Wow,” Cal says breathlessly.

Their eyes glitter from the dots on the map reflecting a blurred light onto their faces.

“What do you think it is?” Merrin asks.

“I don’t know. An unknown region, perhaps?”

A pulsing light to their right catches Merrin’s eye. She squints at a red button on a double-panelled door, wide like the cargo opening of the Mantis.

Cal calls her name when she takes a few steps towards the door. He comes to stand beside her. BD-1 jump from his shoulders to the scan plate of the opening mechanism with a toot.

“Do you want to open it?”

Merrin nods.

“Go ahead BD”, Cal says. The droid extends his arm again. The plate frizzes and the doors slide open.

A blaster bolt whizzes past their heads.

“Look out!”

Cal deflects another bolt from a probe droid, its beeps dwindling into a low murmur, but it manages to shoot another blast in their direction.

The seams of the pouch by Merrin’s hip tear and something explodes. A moist spread down her leg. She’s hit by a cold realization: the droid destroyed her water canister.

Cal slices the probe droid apart with a swing of his lightsaber. Behind its shivering form appears the tall figure of a sentinel droid, reaching out with its arm and catching Cal by his poncho. BD-1 screams. The droid pulls its arm backwards, speaking a mechanical “intruders are not permitted”, before punching Cal in the chest with a blow that sends him crashing onto the floor. Cal groans, teeth gritted.

“Cal!”

By the force of her fear and anger, Merrin conjures bolt after bold of ichors that hit the large droid in the chest, the head, the arm. Its joints fizz and spit smoke, malfunctioning spreading along with its every centimetre in currents of lightning, until it cracks, falling onto the floor in a heap of corrugated metal. Its eyes blink and go out, buzzing.

Merrin rushes to Cal. He raises on his elbow with a strained expression.

“BD, stim please.”

BD-1 opens a compartment under his head and flings a small syringe with a milky liquid into Cal’s hand. He injects it to his arm with a sigh.

Assured he is well, Merrin slowly rises to gaze around the room.

They’re in a hallway, long like the Mantis’ galley and faintly lit in warm light. Spread out by the walls lay various relics resting on alabaster pedestals; a red mask with a sinister grin, a white lance emitting a strange light, a banner, a dagger made of glass, and furthest away, a black Holocron.

“By the Mother,” Merrin whispers. BD-1 coos.

For a reason she’s not sure of herself, Merrin gingerly advances the dagger, reaching out and taking it in her hand. The artefact is surprisingly light and soapy to the touch, shimmering like the inside of a clam. It fits her grip as if it were made for her. Her veins tremble at the power it radiates.

“Merrin.” Cal observes the dagger with a frown. He gazes around the room. “These are Sith relics. You shouldn’t touch them, they are bound to the dark side of the Force.”

“This is a powerful talisman. It will help me sustain my magick.”

He shakes his head and exhales in disquiet.

“It’s evil.”

She shakes her head in turn.

“Things cannot be evil. Acts are evil. Do you not trust me? Have I ever acted out of evil to you?”

“Well…” Cal raises an eyebrow. “You did try to kill me once. Twice, actually.”

She scoffs.

“That was in self-defence.”

He lifts his hand in a worried gesture.

“I don’t like it. It’s a Sith artefact, you shouldn’t use it. Do you really need it for your magic?”

“Do you need your lightsaber?”

He opens his mouth and closes it.

“Yes, but…”

“It’s the same thing.”

His gaze moves between her eyes, scanning for her intention. His hand open and close into a fist.

“Alright. I trust you.”

She places the dagger into the undamaged pouch by her other hip. It reminds her of the broken canister from before.

“Cal. When we opened the door, the droid hit my bag and destroyed my water canister. Do you have water?”

“I left my bag on the speeder that got blasted.”

They close their mouths in a weighty silence.

“We should get out of here.”

They leave the room, once again staring into the holo map of the unknown region before hasting towards the entrance with the many pillars, seeking the exit.

Cal tries to open the door from which they entered the bunker.

“It won’t budge.”

BD-1 beeps in a sad note.

“There’s got to be another way.”

Hurriedly, they return to the control room. Cal leans forwards by one of the computers, typing a series of commands onto the screen with a curse.

“BD, help me decipher this thing.”

The droid coos and drills into the system. Behind them, a grid slides open, letting in a violent gust of wind that has them blinking. The grid closes again.

“I knew it. The computer controls the telescoping vents that open and closes that shaft. We can use it to get out, but - it won’t be comfortable.”

Merrin grabs his hand.

“I am ok with that.”

He nods.

“You ready?

She squeezes his hand in reply.

“Let’s go, BD-1.”

The droid bloops and drills another blast of electricity to the system. Jumping onto Cal’s shoulder, he screams as a sucking wind pulls them, propelled forwards by a push of the Force by Cal, into the shaft. With an ’ouf’, they land on the dune outside, spitting sand.

Grinning, Cal helps Merrin up. They raise to their feet brushing sand off their garments and looking around for the remaining speeder.

Merrin freezes, eyes wide.

“What's wrong?”

Cal frowns at the horror in her gaze and turns to look behind him.

A great cloud, reaching up to the heavens, approach in a speed that matches their bikes. Cal gapes, unable to take in the sight.

“Hurry!”

Merrin pulls his arm and rushes towards the bunker. They place their hands onto the pad but it’s no longer working.

“The cliffs!”

Merrin and Cal run. The heat is unbearable; their tongues cling to the roof of their mouths and their eyes swim with tears. The storm howls, closing in at an alarming speed.

Merrin’s heart pounds in her chest. They need to find shelter or the sand is going to swallow them...

A yip reaches her ears. Jerking her head to the side, Merrin catches the sight of the bogling from a crevice in the cliff, barking to call their attention.

“There!”

They dash towards the animal. Squeezing inside one by one, they enter a small outcrop faintly smelling of dust and hot stone before the storm descends on them, roaring in devastating might.

Panting, they rest onto the sandy cavern floor, staring at the wind that rushes past outside and eating everything in its way.

Cal lights his lightsaber. The beam rises in a hum, provoking their shadows to appear in an orange tinge onto the walls. He sinks his arm in a cough, eyes tearing up. His complexion is pale and the hand planted on the walls of the cavern is trembling.

Merrin frowns.

“Are you ok?”

“Yeah. I’m alright.”

A bolt of fear lands in her chest, warm and aching. He’s lying. Without water, they’ll die in this cavern.

Nauseous in worry, she rises to her feet and closes her eyes. Jakku, she prays, we are not of you, but we need your help. Cal does not deserve to die here; he is a good person. Show us a source of water _._

She opens her eyes at the sound of the bogling yipping. It skips further inside the darkness, stopping to wait for her to follow. BD-1 beeps in curiosity and lights the path forwards. By the end of the outcrop, the bogling jumps a naturally formed shelf and scratches with its paws. Pausing, it meets Merrin’s eyes and whimpers, only to return to its scratching.

Merrin gasps, understanding the bogling’s find. Reciting an incantation, she compels the cliff to open up and reveal its insides, to share its wealth.

A crack runs along with the okra-coloured stone, opening wider until a jet of water rushes from its confinement, cool and crystal clear.

Merrin laughs in a relieved exhale. She cups her hands and catches the flow, returning to Cal to let him drink. After the first gulps, he regains his vitality and is able to walk by himself to the flood slipping out of the cliff and down a crack in the soil, drinking more mouthfuls of water.

Their thirst quenched, they return to the spot where they entered. Cal breaks a piece of the cliff to place in front of the crack that exposes the storm outside, whooshing and howling. A shiver runs down Merrin’s arms at the eerie sound, like a child screaming.

“Do you think the storm will last long?”

“I don’t know. Storms like this could last for days on Dathomir. Let’s hope it ends in a few hours.”

"This reminds me of Zeffo." Cal leans his head against the wall. His eyes are red-rimmed and his lids heavy.

“You can sleep if you want,” Merrin says, ”I’ll keep watch.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks, Merrin. Hey, what you did there with the water. That was amazing.”

She smiles in reply.

Cal pulls his poncho over his head and arranges it to a pillow. Less than five minutes later, his chest rises and sinks with the calm rhythm of his breath.

Merrin hugs her knees, observing the scar across his nose and the light sunburn that colour his cheeks despite his best efforts to cover his face. Her gaze wanders over the contours of his lips and the faint bristle on his chin.

On a whim, she reaches out to carefully wipe a strand of his hair from his forehead.

BD-1 emits a low coo. She peeks at the droid.

“You like him, don’t you?”

The droid beeps softly.

“Me too,” she says in a murmur, redirecting her gaze to Cal.

BD-1 bends his little joints to gingerly touch Cal’s hair with his camera eye.

“Do you like his hair?”

The droid lifts his head in a nod.

“Mm. It’s nice. Unusual. None of the brothers has red hair. Did you know,” she says in a matter-of-fact voice, “that in my clan, the colour red signifies power?”

BD-1 beeps.

“Maul, the Mother’s son, had red skin. Yellow is also considered to be a powerful color.”

BD-1 turns and swings his little body in a comical gesture, bleeping happily.

“You like your yellow paint?” She smiles. “It is nice. Soon you’ll match the Mantis… If they have managed to paint her despite the storm.”

Merrin peeks at the small breach that exposes the swirling of wind outside. She wouldn’t mind setting her eyes on any other colour than sand for a long time. At least she’s starting to understand BD-1 better.

She sinks into a half-meditative state, letting a part of her consciousness stay open to detect danger.

After some time, she’s not sure how much, Merrin’s roused by the quick movements of the bogling rushing over her feet in chase of something gleaming.

It’s a beetle, big like her thumb and skittering fast like a blaster bolt. The bogling catches the beetle by the well, sinking its teeth into its carapace with a loud crack and a hiss.

The animal releases its prey, spitting and frothing, scratching at its nose with its naked paws. The beetle oozes something foul-smelling from its crushed body.

The bogling twists and spits, it rushes to drink from the spring and sneezes, twice in a row. It sends Merrin such a pitiful look she lets out a peal of laughter behind her hand not to wake Cal.

“Come here.” Merrin gestures at the animal who obeys, crawling from shame. “You just learned a valuable lesson. The fauna of Jakku is very different from that of Bogano.”

The bogling squeaks.

“Here.” Merrin digs in her satchel for a packet of dried meat. “Take this. The storm will soon be over - I hope - and you deserve it for saving our lives.”

Sniffing the open packet, the bogling grips the jerky and eats with gusto, it’s ears on end and its whiskers trembling.

“You need a name,” Merrin says to the creature, “I think I have one for you. In my language, the name for naked feet is ‘bosikom’. What do you say - is Bosi your name?”

The bogling stops its eating, flaps its ears, and continues gnawing on the dried meat.

Merrin takes it as an approval.

Cal stirs beside her.

“Hey,” he says in a voice thick from sleep and moves to a seated position with a near inaudible groan and a grimace. The lightsaber wound he got on Nur still ached. “How long was I out?”

“Not long. An hour, maybe two.”

“I see you’ve taken out the rations.”

She hands him a package of jerky and rises, a ration in hand, to the slow running flow of water by the torn cliff. She adds a handful to the open package and waits as the dry powder rises to a loaf, grey to the colour and smelling faintly of meal and yeast.

She returns to Cal. They eat together in silence, only broken by the whistling of the wind outside that blows less harsh and shrieking as before. Cal affirms BD-1’s question that he had slept well.

He tears a part of the bread in his hand and nods towards the bogling.

“Did I hear you name her?”

“Yes. Everyone deserves to have a name. Especially those we consider friends.”

“You and she have a lot in common,” Cal says, chewing, “you’ve both left your home planets to join the Mantis crew.”

Merrin smiles at his comment. Bosi curls into a ball by her feet and yawns.

“I guess we do. I wonder if she’s lonely, without her clan… If she left a mate behind.”

“Did you?”

Merrin darts her gaze at Cal in surprise. His cheeks gain a pink colour but his expression is sincere.

“No.” Merrin is not sure whether to laugh or frown at the question. “The brotherhood served me, also after Malicos arrived, but - I never took a mate.”

She falls silent, a small knot forming in her stomach. Cal’s next question is obvious, and she’s not sure how to answer it.

“Why not?”

Merrin scratches in the sand, heaving her chest in a sigh.

“Ever since the massacre of my sisters, I waited, hoping that somehow, someone had survived. Mother had the ability to bide her time in the realm of spirits. Taking a mate would mean that I was ready to be Mother myself - that I had given up hope.”

A current of shame rasps her inside, from all those years when she was lost, afraid, unsure what to do with no one to guide her - and later, manipulated and fooled by Malicos. Some of the brothers wanted her to mantle the role of Mother; she was strong enough, wielding the power to resurrect the dead only previously seen in Grandmother Daka. Malicos inquired her on the matter as well. For reasons not clear to herself, she refused.

“So, you never wanted to marry one of the brothers?”

She laughs in an exhale through her nostrils. Cal’s question held a naivety, shaped by his lack of knowledge.

“Nightsisters and -brothers do not ‘marry’. When a sister wants to, um -” her cheeks warm, “- procreate, the brothers undergo a trial called the Selection to prove themselves. The strongest become her mate and servant.”

He clasps his hands around his knees, open in a v.

“Does that mean sister and brothers live together, but only if they are mates?”

“No… A sister allows her mate into her home only when she chooses to. The brothers continue to live in their part of the planet, and we continue to live in our coven.”

“I don’t mean to pry,” Cal says. “I just - I think I understand now, why, even though the brothers lived close, you were still alone.”

Her heart drops at that, shaken by its accuracy. How could his words hurt the way they did when living apart from the brothers was at the core of her culture?

“I - I was.”

“Do all brothers wish to eventually become a mate to a sister?”

She frowns, not fully understanding Cal’s question.

“Yes. It is a high honour; only a few are chosen. The brothers form bonds between them, often living in pairs throughout their lives, but if a sister calls, they will undergo the trials.”

“What if you didn’t love the brother chosen to be your mate? Or he you?”

A murmur of irritation rises in her. Cal has the right to ask, but how does one explain things that were an intrinsic part of your way of life, as natural as breathing air?

“Love has nothing to do with it. Among my people, the individual exists for the welfare of the collective. Our purpose lies in serving the magick of our planet through the might of the Sisters; this is our tradition. You may have a more individualist view that I do not fully grasp, but I don’t judge you for it.”

“I’m sorry.” Cal shifts on the sand, sinking his gaze in a remorseful gesture, “I didn’t mean to be judgemental. I’m trying to understand your culture but I admit I’m looking at it from the norms of most Humans.”

She swallows her irritation. He means well. She directs the conversation away from herself.

“Do you wish to one day marry? Have children?”

Cal’s cheeks redden again.

“Jedi’s don’t marry. It’s against our code. We are - were - peacekeepers, guardians of order in the Galaxy. Close relationships like marriage could stray us from our path and impel us to make decisions based on emotion, not reason.”

“No Jedi has ever married?”

“Yeah… There’s been some. A long time ago, there was a powerful Jedi called Bastila Shan. She fell in love with another Jedi, a turned Sith, called Revan. She defied the Jedi Council and married him. They eventually had a son.”

“So the Jedi dictate matters of love and life among them, making the purpose of the collective more important than the wishes of the individual?”

Cal gains a dumbstruck expression, like a fish out of water.

“I, uh, I guess so.”

A heavy silence spreads between them only interrupted by the dwindling howls of the wind outside. Both jump at the frazzled sound of the comm at Cal’s hip. Cere’s voice crackles into the hole of their confinement.

“Cal?”

Cal raises the comm.

“Cere!”

“Thank the Force. Are you alright? We couldn’t reach you because the storm blocked all communication signals.”

BD-1 sings a series of thrills and beeps. Cal smiles.

“I think that was an answer to your question.”

“Do you need help getting out of there?”

Cal meets Merrin’s eyes.

“I think we’re ok. The storm’s almost over. One of our speeder bikes shouldn’t be far from here and once we find it we’ll get back to the Mantis.”

“Call if there’s anything you need. Be careful out there.”

Cere terminates the call.

* * *

Two standard hours later, Cal and Merrin squeeze out of the crevice, BD-1 on Cal’s shoulders and Bosi skipping ahead. The winds are still and the sand calm. Above them, the vast space expands like a dark fabric, spotted by billions of blinking stars. A pink shimmer to the horizon tells of the descending dusk.

A shiver runs over Merrin’s arms. The temperature has dropped significantly compared to the heat of mid-day.

“I can still hear the song. It’s the life essence of this planet. It has not been quenched.”

Cal nods.

“I think so too.”

He inclines his shoulder to let BD-1 jump onto the sand. The droid lits the beam from his eye in a beep.

“It’s your time to shine, buddy.”

BD-1 chatters, running forwards to a dune to their right. By its base, he scans the wall of sand with a thrill.

Cal reaches out and pulls the remaining land speeder from the mound with the Force, placing it beside them and dusting the seat.

“Do you want to drive?”

Merrin shakes her head, her eyelids burning from fatigue.

“We’ll have to do without helmets this time. At least we have the goggles.”

Cal mounts the bike. After he has strapped BD-1 to his chest, he leans forward to let Merrin sit behind him. She hugs his midriff. His body is warm. A sigh of relief falls from her mouth at his familiar scent.

Cal faces Bosi on the ground beneath them.

“Do you want to hop up?”

The bogling yips. In a whizz, she’s on his lap.

“I guess that answers my question,” Cal mumbles with a smile and revs up the speeder. They accelerate over the sand, steering east towards the distant twinkling lights of Cratertown.

The ups and downs of manoeuvring the rolling dunes have a meditative effect. Closing her eyes, Merrin rests her head against Cal’s back and falls into a light slumber, lulled by the steady rhythm of his heart against her ear.

When they reach the now painted Mantis, shining like a polished coin, Cere meets them with a sombre expression to her face.

“Cal, Merrin. We’ve received a distress call from Kashyyyk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Cratertown](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Cratertown)
> 
> [Knockback Nectar](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Cratertown)
> 
> In this chapter, Cal and Merrin enters the [Jakku Observatory](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jakku_Observatory)
> 
> [Commander Rax](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Gallius_Rax)
> 
> I don't know what I did wrong but I never found the bogling companion inside the Mantis! “Bosikom” is Russian. 
> 
> [Mother Talzin](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Talzin)
> 
> [Daka](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Daka)
> 
> [The Selection](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Selection)
> 
> [Bastila Shan](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Bastila_Shan)


	3. Kashyyyk I: Ashmead's Lock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warning: this is a violent chapter with mentions of blood. After seeking advice from another writer in the Star Wars fandom, I’ve upped the rating of this fic to M for violence.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who has left kudos and comments so far - it means a lot :)

Back inside the Mantis, Merrin caresses the silky fur on Bosi’s head and listens to Cere recounting how someone called Mari - a guerilla fighter on Kashyyyk, Cal tells her - sent them a distress call one standard hour ago. The Empire had doubled their assault on the planet since the crew of the Mantis left Kashyyyk last, and the separatist leader Tarfful had been captured.

“We have to help them,” Cal says, “Tarfful helped me find information about the Holocron.”

“If the Empire has redoubled their efforts on Kashyyyk, going there is probably suicide,” Greez says. Behind him, space rushes past as the Mantis flies the Hydian hyper laneway towards the Mid Rim. BD-1’s whistle is heard over Bosi’s purring.

“Caution is always mandatory when dealing with the Empire,” Cere says, “but I agree with Cal. Mari asked us to land the Mantis on the refinery, which means the Empire hasn’t regained control over it yet. This may give us an advantage. I’ll go with you. I may have closed myself off from the Force, but I can still handle a blaster rifle.”

“I will also come,” Merrin says, “and help you in any way I can. I do not know this Tarfful, but I joined the crew to fight by Cal’s side.”

BD-1 bleeps enthusiastically. Cal glances at her with a smile that makes Merrin’s heart do a little skip.

“It’s settled then,” Cere says, “we’re going back to Kashyyyk.”

When Cere leaves to meditate, and Greez to man the pilot’s seat, Merrin asks Cal what Kashyyyk is like.

“It’s green,” he says, “very green. I think you’ll like it.”

* * *

The moment Merrin steps onto the floor of the refinery landing on Kashyyyk, her lungs constrict from the skyrocketing humidity in the air. The giant trees that stretch into the sky crowd her, the overwhelming greenery making her eyes hurt. The scents are overwhelming; earthy, heavy, packed with carbon dioxide. The cacophony of deafening noises above them; screeching, piping, chirping, chattering, adds to the impression. Meeting the guerilla Wookiees is an experience in itself; their roaring speak and their towering bodies - Merrin’s grateful when a human soldier in black hair greets them, leading them into the cool insides of the refinery. The durasteel walls surround them with silent blinks of computer systems and the humming of electric cables.

Mari Kosan - according to Cal a cartographer and previously part of a partisan band led by a man named Saw Gerrera - welcomes them to a former Imperial headquarters inside the refinery. She shakes Merrin’s hand with severity to her face that tells of her worry.

“We blew up a large part of the refinery, from here -” Mari points past a window shield opening to a vast space of cracked and blown-apart metal, “- to the shadowlands. They were poisoning the planet. Taking the refinery was a huge victory, and we did it thanks to you.”

She smiles at Cal who blushes, replying he couldn’t have done it without her and Tarfful’s men.

Merrin goes still. An unfamiliar sensation rises in her; as if a little animal slithers in her chest and gnaws at the edges of her heart. Didn’t Cal speak overly enthusiastic about this Mari person, how she was loyal and stayed on Kashyyyk when the rest of Gerrera’s men did not? And didn’t Mari look at Cal with admiration and - something more?

Merrin controls her facial expression not to reveal her thoughts. She remains like a statue, overhearing Mari recount Tarfful’s abduction.

“They took him here.” Mari presses the tip of her index finger to a point on a dagger-shaped outline on her map. “Tarfful was examining what we believe is a combined laboratory and prison. There’s something we can’t pinpoint about this place; the walls are high and the grounds guarded twenty-six seven.”

“It looks like a ship,” Cal says.

Mari nods.

“It was once a ship that crashed on Kashyyyk long before the siege, remaining hidden inside a collapsed gravity well. It’s called Ashmead’s lock. The Empire has rebuilt it to a prison. It’s said to be impenetrable, but we believe that with your help...”

“We will find Tarfful,” Cal says. Mari smiles at him in gratitude and the little animal gnaws in Merrin’s chest with a growl.

Mari points her finger at several points on the map.

“The prison has an advanced processing unit we’ve failed to intercept. Look here; there are ventilation holes by the base of the prison.” Mari nods at a Wookiee at her side. “The other partisans and I can penetrate them - if we can shut down the guarding processing unit.”

“Sounds like a job for you,” Cal says to BD-1 perched on his shoulders. The droid answers with a series of beeps and whistles that has Cal’s smile waning.

“He says he’ll need an upgrade. He’s not currently programmed to intercept prison intelligence systems.”

All exchange glances in a moment’s heavy silence. The Wookiee by Mari’s side, Choyyssyk, lets out a howl and a grumbling moan.

“There might be a way,” Mari interprets. This part of the ship,” Mari points on a grey area on the map, “seems to be unused - not abandoned, but void of prisoners. Our scan tells us the room is full of data; we believe someone important lived there who might have information on the prison system.”

“Why would there be a large part of the prison unused? What are they hiding in there?” Cere asks to herself as much as to the rest of them.

“That’s what we plan to find out,” Mari says.

“How will you get in without first intercepting the system?” Merrin asks.

Mari sends a sideway glance to Choyyssyk.

“He has an idea. It’s risky, but it’s the best one we’ve got.”

* * *

The next morning, Merrin wakes to the sound of rain tapping against the hull of the Mantis. She peels the blanket off her legs and takes a peek out of the small window by her berth. The omnipresent green of the planet, less overwhelming to Merrin’s eyes than at first impression, glistens of moist. It reminds her of the way the fog of Dathomir could stick onto the cliffs like glittering lace. She traces the streaks of rain on the fibreglass panel with her finger, forming a pattern in the pool of mist that forms from her breath.

Bosi wakes and stretches in a yawn. She stands on all fours and wiggles her tail.

Merrin tussles her ears and leaves the small cabin to brew a pot of caf. Cal is up. She stops flat at the sight of his attire.

He’s covered in the armor of a Stormtrooper. Beside him, on the sofa, lies the white helmet. BD-1 bleeps a series of sing-song sounds beside his feet, greeting Bosi who runs around him in circles.

Cal smiles at the sight of Merrin and lifts his arms in a t-pose.

“What do you think? Do I look alright?”

In truth, he looks a little short for a stormtrooper, but that’s nothing Merrin voices.

“Does it feel alright?”

“Yeah,” he says, rolling his shoulders and lifting a knee, “these uniforms are surprisingly light and agile. Perhaps that’s why the Empire continues to manufacture them despite the poor protection they offer.”

Merrin hums and approaches Cal to pick up the helmet from the sofa. She flips it to investigate the inside.

“GR-1809. Is that some kind of serial number?”

Cal leans in to take a look.

“Yeah. Stormtroopers don’t have names, only numbers. They’re often taken as children and brainwashed to serve the Empire.”

Merrin frowns.

“So, the stormtroopers are victims in war, as we were?”

Cal blinks.

“Yeah… I guess you could say that.”

Cere appears from the back of the ship, stepping down the small stairs by the terrarium.

“It’s them or us.”

She stops by Cal and adjusts the shoulder pads of his uniform.

“Are you still ok with the plan? It’s not without risk.”

“Yeah. I agree with Mari; it’s the best shot at getting inside that prison.”

Merrin slaps the helmet back onto the sofa.

Cere lifts her eyebrows. She turns an unsmiling gaze to Cal.

“Let’s go over this one more time. You take Choyyssyk to the prison, pretending to have captured him. Merrin will take your lightsaber and keep her and BD-1 unseen to sneak in with you. You locate the room with the data system that allows you to upgrade BD-1 and intercept the system. Once that is done, Mari and I and the rest of the guerilla fighters blast our way in, while you three try to locate Tarfful. Once you find him, the rest of the fighters will cover you.”

“Got it,” Cal says. Merrin nods and BD-1 whoops.

Cere indicates at the stormtrooper helmet.

“You’ll need to remember that serial number for identification. The Wookiees found the trooper in the Shadowlands; that’s where you’ll claim you took Choyyssyk as your prisoner.”

Cal nods.

“Let’s go meet the others.”

A few drops of rain spill inside the galley when Cere opens the door of the Mantis to peer onto the platform outside.

Cal smiles crookedly at Merrin.

“I hope stormtrooper uniforms are water-resistant.”

“Hey!” a drowsy voice calls them. Greez steps in from the cockpit, his hair standing on end and his sideburns unkempt. “You’re leaving already? Alright. Good luck.”

“Be ready on the comm if we need help,” Cere says, "and don't forget to intercept any distress calls to the Empire."

“Yep!” Greez waves. “Now close the door before I get rust in the hull!”

* * *

An hour later, Merrin, Cal, BD-1, Bosi, and Choyyssyk tramples the forest floor towards Ashmead’s lock, pausing at the edge of a cliff that offers a spectacular view of the surrounding landscape. The sun has risen behind the veil of clouds that continue to drizzle a light rain over their heads, offering milky daylight. The scent of wet moss, the surrounding chirps of birds and insects - Merrin understands the allure of Kashyyyk better today. She especially relishes in how the bark of the trees grows in gnarled patterns that feels pleasant under her hand.

Bosi dashes from branch to branch of the trees, patting leaves and flower petals with her paws. She catches a large dragonfly in a well-aimed stealth jump, crunching it in a bite. BD-1 chirps in admiration of her agility.

Cal steps over a fern, pushing a hand through his moist hair.

“This drizzle reminds me of Bracca. It always rained there, well almost always. Prauf called it ‘a soggin’ rock.’”

He sighs.

“I’m glad I got out of there,” Cal says in a low note. “I just wish he had, too.”

A wave of compassion rises in Merrin. Cal had told her of how Trilla killed his friend Prauf on Bracca.

Choyyssyk roars and moans, indicating with his head towards south. Rising from the ground like an ominous fang, Ashmead’s lock appears in front of them, partly hidden in the mist. Two TIE-fighters screeches past in a line over their heads. White spots moving along the rampart tells of several stormtroopers guarding the premise.

“Cere,” Cal speaks into his comm, “are you closing in on the lower levels?”

“Yes,” Cere replies in a static buzz. “It’s up to you now. Be careful.”

Cal meets Choyyssyk’s gaze.

“Alright, time for action.”

The Wookiee snorts and holds out his large paws in front of Cal who puts him in the round Imperial shackles they found on the dead trooper.

“Is this ok?”

Choyyssyk growls in response. Cal puts the stormtrooper helmet on his head and turns to Merrin with his lightsaber in hand. His voice gains a clangorous note from inside the armour.

“Are you ready?”

Merrin nods. She takes the saber and clips it to her belt. BD-1 leaves Cal’s shoulders to climb onto hers. Pressing the edge of her Rancor bone into her hand, she silently recites an incantation that sends green flames sprawling over hers and BD’s forms, turning them invisible. A shiver to the air is all that remains of them.

Cal takes Choyyssyk’s blaster rifle in his hands and meets the Wookiee’s gaze.

“Let’s go.”

* * *

The prison entrance raises from the ground to tower over their heads like the trunk of a giant Wroshyr tree surrounded by the serrated rampart. Two stormtroopers guard the metal door, blaster rifles in hand. Cal and Choyyssyk approach the small stairs that lead to the trampled ground before the gate of Ashmead’s lock, overhearing one of the troopers complaining about the ‘incessant rain’.

“Halt!” one exclaims as soon as they come closer, “reveal your identity!”

“GR-1809!” Cal shouts, “I was on a mission in the Shadowlands when the guerilla fighters assaulted us. I managed to survive and caught this one.”

The guards lower their rifles.

“GR-1809? You’ve been missing for a week. What happened to your group?”

“They didn’t make it.”

From a branch of a tree above, Merrin whispers at Bosi to be quiet and to stay put until they return. The bogling sits still save for her trembling whiskers.

Below, the guards send a command through a datapad and the giant door slide open with a screech of moving metal.

Merrin wastes no time. She propels inside, leaving nothing but a trail of faint green swirls in her wake. BD-1 bleeps from her shoulders.

“You better report to the commander,” one of the guards says, “he’s in the prison ward. Your - Hey! what was that?”

The stormtrooper flinches and takes a step back.

“What?” His comrade says.

“Something brushed past me - but I can’t see anything! I swear this bloody jungle is giving me the creeps!”

Choyyssyk roars.

“Alright,” says the first stormtrooper, aiming his rifle at the Wookiee, “take him to the prison ward. Good to have you back, GR-1809.”

Cal nods and points his weapon in the back of Choyyssyk who, in role, reluctantly staggers forwards. When they pass the guards, one leans closer to the other and whispers, “GR-1809 looks like he’s been through hell. He’s lost weight. And height? I’m going crazy in this rainforest.”

The other peeks behind them at the small stormtrooper and huge Wookiee who marches into the prison and takes a left behind a wall of white and chrome steel.

“Hey!” He hollers, “that’s not the way to the prison wa -”

Both stormtroopers face each other.

“Shit,” they say in unison before they run after Cal and Choyyssyk.

Rounding the corner, a well-aimed blow hits the stormtroopers by the temples. Unconscious, they sag to the floor. Cal grabs one of the trooper’s hands and places it against a pad by the wall. A pair of doors shut in front of them like huge pieces of a jig-saw puzzle.

The moment the slam of the doors rings through the corridor, red light pulses and a voice blares through a series of speakers in the corridor.

 _Peer assault detected. Possible prisoner liberation attempt_. _All guards to the entrance floor._

Merrin steps out of her invisibility spell in a flash of green.

“Their prison system speaks?”

“Merrin,” Cal says, “my lights-”

A blast hits the wall by Cal’s midriff, missing his guts by an inch. Merrin slinks into invisibility, teleporting behind a midsection wall. A group of stormtroopers rush towards them. Cal and Choyyssyk equip their blasters, gunning down the first trooper. The corridor fills with the swishes and pangs of fired blaster weapons.

“The room!” Cal shouts to Merrin through the blaster smoke, “you’ve got to find the data room and shut the security system down! Don’t worry about us!”

Merrin hesitates, a pearl of sweat gathering at her temple. She unclicks the saber from her hip to throw it at Cal but a blast hits her above the head, prompting her to crouch and rush to the other side of the corridor. BD-1 bleeps a series of upset noises but silences when Merrin shushes him, afraid the troopers will catch them.

She peeks out from behind a pillar. Cal and Choyyssyk manage to get a few more of the troopers down before the enemies overwhelm them. Handcuffed, they are frogmarched towards the other end of the area that leads to a large elevator.

Swearing silently, Merring does her best to damper the panic rising in her. Why didn’t Cal use the Force to take the troopers down? Her heart aches. It must be because he trusts her to go through with the mission, enough not to want to expose that he is a Jedi - yet. She fidgets with the talisman in her hand, reciting an incantation to cool her head. She must do this - Cal told her not to worry.

“Ok, little droid. It is you and me now.”

BD-1 bleeps. Merrin has no idea what he’s trying to say but hopes it’s an attempt to tell her they can do it. Mother knows she needs the encouragement.

Teleporting towards the stairs that lead to the section of the prison with the data system - at least according to what she remembered from the map - Merrin makes her way through the sterile corridors of Ashmead’s lock. Her presence is like a whisper against the armor of passing troopers.

* * *

A guard pushes Cal and Choyyssyk inside a naked cell that stinks of mold and vinegar. They stumble forwards to the sound of mocking insults hurled at them by the stormtroopers.

“Did you think you could free your comrades with that lousy decoy? This is the best-guarded prison this side of the Mid Rim. You’ll become fodder for the plague doctors like the rest of your pathetic excuse for a guerilla army.”

The troopers leave, the marching sound of their armor dwindling. Cal rolls his shoulders with a curse. The guards stripped him of his trooper armor to his usual attire but without his lightsaber, he might as well be naked.

“Well,” he says, “that… could have gone better. At least they didn’t detect Merrin and BD. I bet they can find their way to that data systems room.”

Choyyssyk roars and snorts in a series of wailing sounds.

Several roars reach them from further in the prison ward. Choyyssyk grasps the cell bars and shakes them, howling.

“Tarfful?” Cal yells. He’s met by an affirmative roar that has him smiling, despite himself. “Are you ok?”

The two Wookiees speak in Shyriiwook, accompanied by the voices of other prisoners. Cal catches a few phrases of the moaning language but most of it is unintelligible.

“I wish Mari were here,” he mumbles.

Choyyssyk moans and digs into his neck where he has entangled a small comm in his brown fur. Cal takes it, eyes large.

“Choyyssyk - you’re a genius!”

The Wookie turns the device on, speaking silently - by Wookiee standard - and after a few minutes of frizzes and crackles, Cere speaks through the comm.

“Cere!” Cal whispers, “can you hear us?”

A buzz drowns her first words.

“... are you?”

Cal quickly fills Cere in on the situation and hands the comm to Choyyssyk who speaks to Mari. He frowns as the moans and quiet roars of the Wookiee turns more plaintive than usual.

“Cal,” Mari says, “Choyyssyk just told me you’ve spoken to Tarfful. That’s great. Unfortunately, he’s got some bad news. The Empire is using the guerilla soldiers in experiments that make them sick. It’s some kind of biological weapon. It seems they are using the Wroshyr tree sap for making something that has Wookiees losing their fur and getting awful wounds to their skin.”

“They’re using the trees to invent a biological weapon against Wookiees?” Cal says, his insides going cold. “That’s - beyond evil. For what? To take control over Kashyyyk’s natural resources? What is the Empire doing that needs that amount of resources?”

“We don’t know,” Mari says through the comm, “but we can’t get inside to free you as long as that prison security system is up.”

* * *

Merrin hugs the walls of the upper floor, gritting her teeth in extortion. The incantation that renders her and BD-1 invisible is waning. Her magic doesn’t respond to her the same way on this planet as it does on Dathomir; Kashyyyk does not lend her power the way she’s used do. It resists. A flare of panic rises in her as a patch of her arm flickers visible as a pair of stormtroopers march past. She waits, heart pounding in her chest, but they fail to notice her.

“BD,” she whispers, “are we close?”

The droid thrills lowly in response. He opens a holo map, revealing the data systems room highlighted in yellow to their right.

A door slides open. Two Humans in lab coats exit the room, discussing a holo of a graph. Merrin tries to slide past them before the doors shut close but fail, afraid to attract their attention. She curses silently when the men in lab coats continue their stroll further down the corridor.

BD-1 hops off her shoulders and intercepts the lock. It takes him less than a minute to get the doors open. When she rushes inside, flinching at the way the door slam shut, Merrin makes sure they are alone before she releases the incantation and slumps on the floor. She sits next to a counter with a stand holding glass vials, distorting her view of blinking computers on the adjacent wall.

“Using my magic on this planet is exhausting. The energies do not cooperate.” She makes a face.

BD-1 thrills and opens the little compartment by his side. Merrin catches the stim he hurls to her.

“I am not injured.”

BD-1 bleeps something she interprets as an encouragement to take the stim and injects it to her shoulder the way she’s seen Cal do. Within seconds, her fatigue melts away, replaced by a rush of energy.

“What is in those, anyway?” she asks the droid, awed.

BD-1 blops.

Both snap their heads to the roof as the robotic voice from before resonates in the room.

_Greetings, trespassers! This is Predori Prison Ship Ashmead's Lock. I am the ship's IPU, or Intellectual Processing Unit, designation SOL-GDA: Synthesized Operating Layer, Grid-Based Drive Array. Welcome to my ship._

“What..?” Merrin whispers.

_You will notice that all attempts at intercepting me are futile. I was programmed by the Predori, a race far superior to your own, and further developed by the architect Golas Aram. This prison is impenetrable._

Merrin frowns, unsure how to react. The prison system was… bragging?

She flicks a gaze to BD-1 who is slowly walking sideways towards a table full of tools.

“Aha,” she says in a drawl, “if you’re so impenetrable, then how did we manage to get this far inside?”

_Unimportant! You will never get out. You are hereby prisoners at my will, trapped until the end of time!_

The IPU system starts to blare an alarm. Mother, Merrin thinks, he’s got a foul temper. Beside her, BD has reached the table and fiddles with a metal rod.

“Do you really think you, and this prison, will stay here until the end of time?” Merrin says, mustering scepticism to her voice, “I doubt it. The jungle outside will swallow this ship, and you will become nothing but a nest for birds and lizards. The people of this planet will build their homes on your ruin!”

 _Fool!_ the system spits, _I am programmed to withstand the test of time and space! A Wookiee-infested jungle could never defeat me!_

“Do you want a bet?”

Merrin closes her eyes. She reaches out to the planet, begging it to listen.

I am not asking you to follow my command, she prays, I am trying to save someone who wants to save you. I fight against those cutting down your trees, murdering your lands. Help us.

For several heartbeats, nothing happens, until something tugs at the back of her mind. Kashyyyk has decided to listen. She opens her eyes, smiling. A low rumble trembles along the walls. The single window of the room, barred by metal beams, smashes open and the bars bend to the groaning invasion of a giant tree trunk. The floor cracks. Green wines slither inside, crashing furniture and computers. Spores explode, leaving white spots. Flowers bud onto the metal of the tables and shed their petals over the splinters of fallen glass.

The data system screams. BD-1 jumps from the table, thrilling triumphantly, and rushes to a datapad by the entrance. He extends his leg, emitting green light, and inserts it into the pad. After a few twists and turns, the data system stops screaming and the jarring voice melts to a low blur. At the same moment, the forest retreats, the vines and meaty stems slithering back from where they came.

Outside the room, troopers and doctors rush by, exclaiming upset shouts and commands. Merrin stares at BD-1 who bleeps at her.

“You are amazing, little droid. Let us go find Cal.”

BD-1 skips and whistles in joy.

* * *

In the cell, Cal and Choyyssyk take a step back, gaping at the floor that erupts by a root sprouting white flowers. The Wookiee growls and lifts his paws. An electric current fizzes through the metal beams of the cell, shaking the bars and swinging the door open. From the floor above, heavy footfalls tremble the roof. The rustling sound of running stormtroopers draws nearer.

“They did it,” Cal says with a grin. “Mari!” he calls through the comm, “the security system is down!”

“We know. We’re coming in.”

A few seconds later, a large bang shakes the entire ship. The guerilla soldiers penetrate Ashmead’s lock from below.

The first stormtrooper rushes down the prison ward, shouting commands. From the cell further ahead, Tarfful reaches out and grabs the guard by the neck, shaking him until he drops his blaster rifle. Cal stretches his hand in the air and pulls the next guard to him in a bang against the bars. The trooper slumps, unconscious. Choyyssyk takes his rifle and howls.

“I agree,” Cal says, “let’s find Merrin and BD and take that laboratory down.”

* * *

Merrin sneaks out of the data systems room and runs out into the empty corridor. All around them, retreating vines crack and split the sterile walls. Yellow and white flowers still bloom from broken branches, and above, a bird flutters past, shrieking. Merrin halts at the sound of approaching troopers from behind a corner and surveys their surroundings, all senses on alert. BD-1 beeps and sends a holo of the map before her, indicating a room further down the hall.

She runs. Closing the door behind her, she crouches below the glass panel that covers half the room. Slowly, she advances further inside towards another door at the corner of the room when her ears pick up a curious sound, like a ball bouncing. The onslaught of the jungle have crashed most of the equipment in the room; vials, tubes, holobooks, syringes, datapads; all scattered around the floor in a mix with torn Wroshyr leaves. A lone ant runs along an elongated plastic tube by a crooked desk.

An impulse has Merrin pick up a holobook. BD-1 beeps when she opens it. Flinching, she drops the book to the floor but the appalling images remain open to her sight; a moving picture of Wookiees covered in pus-filled wounds and scabs, crying out in pain. The image flickers before it dies.

By the Mother, what are they doing in this place?

BD-1 bleeps in a sad note.

Merrin scurries to the room on the other side, angered and sick to her stomach, but stops flat before the glass frame above the datapad that opens the sliding mechanism.

Inside the room on the other side are children, most of them Human but Merrin recognizes two other humanoid species. A net of roots sprouting leaves and flowers has breached the wall and green moss specks the tiles of the floor. A few of the older children chase a dragonfly around, one bounces a ball, but the smaller children sit huddled by a carer, cheeks streaked with tears. In the corner, a man tries to soothe the crying of a small infant.

One of the children sees her peering through the glass and shrieks. Merrin staggers backward, eyes large, and runs towards the door where she came from. BD-1 beeps from his position on her shoulders. When they rush out into the corridor, a scout trooper commander wielding a riot baton spots them. The purple crackles of his weapon freeze the blood in Merrin’s veins.

“There’s one of them!”

The trooper charges Merrin in an overhead slash. On instinct, she dodges, unable to sink into invisibility before the trooper commander swings his baton at her midriff. BD-1 bleeps in horror.

Without thinking, Merrin unclips the lightsaber by her hip and ignites it with a hum. She tries to copy Cal’s defensive movement and catches the baton with the blade. The impact has the two weapons spitting sparks.

She has no idea what she’s doing. In a clumsy upwards arc, fueled by nothing other than her will to survive, she manages to land a hit onto the trooper’s arm, sending him reeling backward. To her surprise, an invisible force hurls the trooper through the air, crashing him against the cracked walls with a bang.

“Merrin! BD!”

Cal rushes towards them, flanked by three Wookiees with blaster rifles in their paws. Merrin extinguishes the lightsaber and exhales in relief. She stretches out her hands with the lightsaber but Cal ignores it and takes her hands, reflecting her smile with his own. BD-1 jumps to his shoulders in a series of exciting bleeps.

“Are you ok?”

“Yes.” She squeezes his hands. “Cal. There is something you need to know. In that room -”

She glances behind her.

“I know,” Cal says and clips the lightsaber to his belt. “They’re experimenting on the Wookiees. Tarfful told us.” The tallest of the Wookiees behind him roar. “Tarfful, this is Merrin. And this is BD-1. They’re part of the Mantis crew.”

Merrin nods but catches Cal’s gaze again.

“No, or yes, but that is not all. Cal, they’ve got children in there. I think they belong to the families of the doctors that do these experimentations for the Empire.”

Cal gapes.

“They’ve got their families here?” He turns to Choyyssyk and Tarfful. “Mari and Cere are busy planting the lower grounds full of explosives. We can’t destroy this place if it’s full of kids!”

Tarfful moans and growls, showing his fangs, He lifts his arm to reveal a large spot of skin, blemished and badly scarred.

“I know what they did to you,” Cal says in a somber tone, “and to your friends. But those children didn’t ask to be part of this war. If we kill them, we aren’t any better than the Empire.”

The three Wookiees speak in Shyriiwook, gesturing with their long arms. Tarfful huffs in what Merrin interprets as remorse, and starts sending out commands through the comm.

“What did they say?” she asks Cal.

He smiles.

“I think he’s saying that we’re evacuating the prison.”

* * *

The evacuation takes less than an hour. With the security system down and all the prisoners freed and armed, the guerilla warriors and the Mantis crew take over Ashmead’s lock with a minimum of casualties. Mari and some of the Wookiee soldiers supervise survivors outside the old ship.

Meanwhile, the last resisting stormtroopers retreat to a platform outside the prison by the laboratory wing, firing blasters towards the open gate where Cal, Merrin, and two Wookiee soldiers wait for an opportune moment to run outside. When a blast hits one of the Wookiees in the side, Cal yells at the other soldier to take him into safety.

“There are only three stormtroopers left on the platform,” he says to the retreating Wookiee, “we’ll manage on our own.”

Merrin is running on fumes, her magic depleting. She has an impulse to ask BD-1 for a stim, but doesn’t, unsure of how many he has left. The syringes need to be for Cal if he gets injured. A few drops of magic still runs through her veins; she uses them to bolsters Cal’s force attunement before he rushes outside, deflecting the whizzing blasts and taking out the last enemies with a sprint strike. The rain flows in small streams around his boots, reflecting the dark clouds above.

Merrin enters the platform, her nose stinging from the remaining blaster smoke and her ears ringing from the silence that ensues.

It’s over - they did it.

A sudden tingling to her skin has her on edge. The sound of motor turbines draws nearer, coming from above.

“Merrin, watch out!” Cal shouts.

A descending ship, large as the Mantis, with an octagonal core and two sharp blades pointing out from the hull, descend towards Cal and Merrin.

A rush of adrenaline has Merrin conjuring more energy to her magick.

A masked figure, clothed in the inquisitorial black attire, jumps from the ship onto the platform with a sharp bang that splatters the water. She rises, two sabers in hand, and ignites the red beams in a v from her hips. Her teal lekku, crisscrossed by a leather band, fall down her back in a flowing movement.

“What have we here?” she says, her voice smoky and honeyed, surveying Cal up and down. “You fit the description of the Jedi that nearly destroyed the fortress on Nur. This will please Lord Vader.”

“That’s him, isn’t it?” Cal asks, blinking against the rain. “The Sith inside the fortress?”

The inquisitor removes her helmet, revealing a sharp-toothed grin. Her eyes, yellow like the sun at dawn, narrows at Cal in mocking delight. She takes several steps closer, her lightsabers spitting red against the wet metal of the platform.

“There is so much you don’t know, little Jedi. I am the Fifth sister. Before I kill you, you will tell me where the other Jedi is; the woman who fought with you on Nur. I will grant the universe the riddance of two more of your kind until you are all but extinct.”

Cal falls into the Soresu defensive stance, his lightsaber in a vertical incline in front of his body.

“The Jedi will never die.”

Merrin closes in to stand beside him, rotating her hand to let a surge of power surround Cal in faint swirls of green.

“Especially not this one,” she says, eyes narrowed.

The Fifth sister raises her eyebrows. She throws her head back and lets out a laugh.

“Someone cares for you, little Jedi!” She clicks her tongue. “Didn’t you know the Order forbids attachments?”

Squinting, she circles Cal and Merrin as if they were caught prey. 

"Wait," she says and points one of her sabers to Merrin. "You're a Nightsister! I thought you were all dead. How curious to see you together - two representatives of soon extinct congregations." She scoffs. "One with their unique version of the dark, and another that claimed to be the only ones to understand the light. Your people fell for the exact same reasons - pride, and vanity!"

At those words, Cal attacks but stiffens, hovering in the air as if caught by an invisible hand. BD-1 falls from his shoulders and with a hard push, the droid and Merrin both fly across the platform, sliding along the floor. Cal shouts their names.

At that moment, the Fifth sister’s ship lands with a groan of metal against metal. From the opening of its cargo outlet, an AT-ST walker stomps its giant metal paws onto the platform, its limbs wheezing with every step.

Merrin freezes, unable to catch her breath. Cal’s voice, calling her name, reaches her as if a body of water separated them. Merrin is cast back to Dathomir as a twelve-year-old girl, staring into a similar ground force machine spitting blasts and sending her flying in an arch, landing with a thud against the cliffs smeared with the blood of her sisters. She crawls into a small crevice, clawing and squeezing until she reaches a small outcrop where she waits, hands over her ears to drown out the sounds of screams and fired blasters…

BD-1 shrieks. She dives to the right to avoid a blast from the walker aimed at her chest. In her fall, she lands on something hard against her hip.

The realization hits her like a blast. The dagger from the vault on Jakku!

Reaching inside the pouch, she scrambles to her feet, eyes riveted to the walker. The moment her hand encloses the handle of the dagger, her fear transforms into cold hatred, like a drop of ink in water. The dagger trembles in her hand, begging her to use its power. It’s glass surface ripples with a pattern of light.

Her senses zoom in on the bodies of stormtroopers scattered around the platform. The clouds above thicken and gain a darker tone, rolling in and releasing showers of rain. A rope of lightning strikes a nearby tree in a bang.

She places the dagger before her face, palm resting on the flat side of the blade. The moment her incantation starts, the dead bodies around start to twitch. Broken, sagging, limping - the fallen troopers rise to climb the legs of the walker that shoots around its metal body. It’s great foot slips in the rain and the walker inclines from the weight of dead bodies that hang around its limbs like strange fruit, grasping for the doors to the cockpit. When the machine falls with a bang, the pilots inside rush out to escape their dead tormentors, in vain.

Merrin commands the troopers to push the pilots towards the edge of the platform. When they fall, they fall screaming, taking several of the troopers with them towards the bottom of the old gravity well. The rest of the walking dead flop to the floor, unmoving, when Merrin stops her incantation.

She turns, searching for Cal. She finds him on the other side of the platform, on his back with the Fifth sister looming over him, lightsabers in hand. The rain washes over them in flowing veils.

The sprawling ink inside Merrin’s chest catches fire, like throwing a match into a pool of gasoline.

The dagger shivers in her hand, promising her the blood of the Fifth sister.

* * *

Once the Fifth sister releases Cal from the Force grasp, she assaults him by a series of slashes, forcing him to perform a choreography of blocking moves. His ears fill with the buzz and crack of swinging and clashing blades. He attempts to glance in Merrin’s direction but receives a hard blow to his arm that sends a white-hot wave of pain along his nerve ends.

“I was once a padawan, like you,” the Fifth sister says, circling him with a flame in her eyes, “I grew up in the slums of Coruscant. The Jedi found me after I used the Force to kill a man who tried to assault me when I was just a girl.”

“If the Jedi saved you,” Cal replies and counters a rapid overhead slash, “why do you hate them so much?”

“Because they never cared about people in the slums!” She hisses, her pointy teeth gleaming in a flash of lightning. “Do you know what it’s like to live in the dirt? What’s done to children with no one to care for them? Daylight never reaches the lower levels of Coruscant. Above us, the lights and roars of machines that served the elites reached us every day while our houses were infested by granite slugs and stone mites!”

She pushes Cal with the force, sending him staggering. Something happens on the other side of the platform; Merrin's fighting an AT-ST walker, he needs to get to her... He takes a step towards the other side of the platform when The Fifth sister attacks again.

“Not so fast, little Jedi. We'll get to her later: you will listen. Did you know that the slums of Coruscant were full of bandits and slyth dealers that forced children to slave for them? The Jedi only ‘saved’ me because I had an affinity with the Force but they left my friends, other girls and boys like me, to fend for themselves!”

At her words, Cal’s heart slumps in his chest. Her next assault has him falling onto his back.

“The Jedi were never a police force!” He cries out, squinting through the rain. “They were peacekeepers -”

“The Jedi closed their eyes to how the crime syndicates that ruled in my part of Coruscant had connections to the Sith and the senate alike! Had they cared about what happened in the slums instead of sitting on their noble arses in their noble temple, they would have noticed how everything was falling apart right in front of their very eyes!”

She steps on his chest, pointing the tip of her spitting saber between his eyes.

“But no. The Jedi were too good to lower themselves to looking after ordinary people. After he turned me, Lord Vader allowed me to chase down some of the senators that visited the nightclub where I worked to take advantage of me and my friends. I killed them, one by one. I finally got to use the Force the way I wanted to.

The cold hatred in her eyes solidifies in her next words.

“I will enjoy watching you die, Jedi. Just like I'll enjoy killing your Nightsister.”

She stiffens, eyes wide when a gleaming dagger of glass cuts into the skin of her neck.

“You will be the one to die.”

With a vertical slash, Merrin severs the windpipe of the Twi’lek who falls to the ground, twitching and gurgling. Her eyes that shone with surprise turn inwards and glossy.

The triumph that soars in Merrin’s veins sours to a pit of worry in her guts at Cal’s reaction. He stands, face pale and chest heaving, staring at the dead woman with horror in his eyes before lifting his gaze to Merrin.

“Are you ok?” she asks, surprised by the tremble in her voice.

_Why is he looking at me like that?_

He lowers his gaze to the dagger in her hand which further tightens the knot of worry in her guts.

“Yeah, I’m ok. Tarfful and the rest are probably waiting for us. C’mon.”

She stands as if rooted to the spot when he walks over to BD-1 and lifts the droid with a soft “You ok, buddy?”. He meets her gaze in a glance before he strides towards the entry of the prison building.

Merrin follows. The blood she previously craved flows around her feet, mixing with the rain in crimson rivulets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Ashmead’s lock](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ashmead's_Lock). I’ve played around a little with canon here - Ashmead’s lock didn’t have a laboratory. 
> 
> [Greetings, trespassers!](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Synthesized_Operating_Layer,_Grid-Based_Drive_Array)
> 
> [Golas Aram](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Golas_Aram)
> 
> [The Soresu defensive stance](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Form_III), or Form III.


	4. Kashyyyk II: The Origin Tree

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I first wrote this fic exclusively from Merrin’s pov but Cal wanted his pov to be part of the story too and I can’t deny him anything.

The rest of the afternoon, Tarfful arranges the evacuation of the children and their parents, mostly women, from Ashmead’s lock. After the guerilla soldiers have fed and properly taken care of the prisoners, Tarfful orders cargo ships to send them and their belongings, along with plenty of foodstuff and water, to one of Kashyyyk’s moons where the Empire can fetch them in due time. Merrin helps Cere, Mari, Cal, and a group of Wookiees escort the people inside the ships, her chest tight at the sound of children crying over the waning drizzle of rain.

To them, she and Cal are the enemies, monsters even - forcing their families from the place where they were likely born...

“They’ll be alright,” Cere says, placing a hand on Merrin’s shoulder. “Soon, they’ll be fetched by the Empire and hopefully taken care of. How are you?”

Merrin replies that she’s good. In truth, she’s sore, all of her muscles aching and her heart heavy like a stone in her chest. Cal is still not talking to her besides giving her curt instructions on what to do and where to go when she asks him.

The setting sun paints the sky in spectacular shades of orange when the crew of the Mantis and Tarfful’s guerilla fighters gather by the forest edge to witness the explosion that destroys the laboratory on Ashmead’s lock. The chirps of insects serenade the pieces of steel, chrome, and stone that fall into the old gravity well and buries the technologies of the prison plague doctors forever. Merrin rests her hand against the coarse bark of a Wroshyr tree, grazing the tail of Bosi who’s perched onto her shoulders while listening to the sounds of the forest returning after the echo of the explosion has died.

Tarfful roars something in Shyriiwook that has his soldiers lifting their arms and showing their fangs in large grins.

“He’s inviting us all to celebrate in the headquarters by the old refinery,” Mari translates.

“Finally some fun after all this gloom!” Greez, who joined them when taking over the prison, smacks his two pairs of hands together and grins at Tarfful. “How about some knock-back nectar? I have a bottle left since Jakku. It’s strong like a Voranticus - puts some chest on your chest!”

“We’d love to come,” Cere says with a warm smile to Mari.

“I -” Cal swallows. “Maybe another time. I’d like to get back to the Mantis and get some rest.”

Cere nods with a concerned eye cast at Cal.

“Of course. It’s been a long day. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I will go with you,” Merrin says to Cal. He nods in a tight-lipped expression.

They separate from the others, penetrating the crevice of a cliff to reach the Mantis, hidden behind the mountain and camouflaged by the stems of glistening Wroshyr trees. BD-1 lights the way, highlighting the creeping moss and hanging root strings. The scent of earth is thick like blood.

“Cal,” Merrin says, her chest tight, “please talk to me.”

He strides forward in a stiff gait, his shoulders tensed.

“Whatever happened there,” he says, “when the Fifth sister attacked... It was wrong. You had this strange glow in your eyes, and it - scared me.”

“She was going to kill you.”

He stops to face her.

“Yeah, and I’m glad you saved my life but the way you did it…”

“How is it different to take a life with a lightsaber than with a dagger? I don’t understand!”

“Because that thing is evil!” He gestures towards the pouch by her hip. “It’s connected to the dark side of the Force and it changed you!”

He’s never shouted at her before. Bosi jumps from Merrin’s shoulders with a squeak.

“I’m not a warrior like you,” She says in a controlled voice. “I have always fought with whatever means I could to survive. This is me; this is who I am.”

_And if you can’t accept it, perhaps it’s best if we parted._

She doesn’t voice the thought, sensing she’d regret it, but it breaks her heart nevertheless.

“Look,” Cal says, lowering his tone and his hands, “I’m pretty exhausted from today and I think it’s best if we talked about this another time, ok?”

She nods. The rest of the walk to the Mantis is agony, the atmosphere stiff and brittle like ice.

* * *

Cal places a hand under his head on the sofa and squeezes his eyes shut. With a huff, he shifts to his back, staring into the roof of the Mantis. His ears pick up a faint rustle from the back of the ship; the sound of Merrin, unable to sleep. Like he is unable to sleep.

Cal sits with a sigh. BD-1 bleeps softly by his side.

The intensity of Cal’s emotions from before has cooled to a sour ache in his chest but he’s still unable to untangle all the confusing thoughts running through his mind. He has an impulse to seek out Cere by the refinery to talk to her but stays, worried it’ll make things worse. Would Cere judge Merrin for picking up the Sith dagger on Jakku? Would she lose her trust in Merrin, and go back to that tentative caution around her - or worse, ask her to leave the Mantis crew?

He wouldn’t be able to stand it. Cere wasn’t on Dathomir, finding Force echoes with memories of a little girl crying, alone, fending for herself after her sisters were slaughtered…

_I’ve always fought with whatever means I could to survive._

The ache returns in Cal’s chest. He closes his eyes, zoning in onto the place in the back of his mind that allows him absolute focus; that place Master Tapal showed him in meditation. His inner turmoil had other reasons than reacting to the way Merrin acted on the platform; dark in the gaze with hate and triumph. It had to do with him, and he needed to face it.

 _Never be afraid of who you are_ , Master Tapal said to him. _Understand yourself, and you will understand everything around you._

Cal’s confused about his feelings for Merrin.

What does he feel for her? Cal concentrates, untangling thoughts. He wants her to never be alone and afraid again. He’s never felt better than when they fight together, enhancing each other's strengths and falling into a synced pattern that makes him feel invincible. He’s grateful they’ve met. To people who don’t know her, Merrin might come across as cold and haughty but Cal has seen the depth of emotion behind her walls. Merrin was brave and strong to break with her past and join him. He admires her for how open she was to new experiences.

Meeting Merrin has made Cal realize how lucky he was, despite the horrifying experience of Order 66. He had Prauf; a decent, kind person who cared for him. Merrin had no one, except for a madman who tried to trick her into teaching him her magick. A wave of antipathy flows through Cal at the thought of Malicos. He's glad they fought the old Jedi together. 

What’s wrong with having those feelings? Why would they confuse him?

It was something the Fifth sister said. _Didn’t you know the Order forbids attachments?_

Perhaps it’s because of that light and bubbly feeling inside when he makes her smile? Or how he enjoys resting his gaze on the tattooed lines on her face?

Jedis weren’t supposed to feel that way about someone, were they?

Was he afraid, that by caring for Merrin, he’s betraying an Order that no longer exists? By doing so, isn’t he betraying their friendship?

Cal wakes from his meditation. Hasn’t he, like Merrin, wanted to kill the way she did? When Trilla killed Prauf, Cal was filled with a fiery wish to run her through with his lightsaber. How would he have felt if Prauf had survived and shouted at him for it, making him feel like a callous murderer?

Cal groans. BD-1 beeps in worry.

“I haven’t been a very good friend, BD,” he whispers. “I need to talk to Merrin come morning.”

BD-1 whistles in affirmation.

* * *

When the first rays of the sun break through the rich greenery around the Mantis, Merrin finds a moth resting against the windowpane by her small bed. It flutters away, flashing two green dots on its wings like eyes. Merrin hasn’t slept, twisting and turning, the pit in her stomach aching like a scab on her insides. Bosi snores beside her, unaware of her friends’ inner turmoil.

The first wave of angered hurt has vaned inside Merrin; the thoughts of how wrong Cal was, how unfair… The memory of that white-hot sensation of power that coursed through her veins when she woke the dead stormtroopers soon replaced her hurt pride. The mocking sense of superiority when she slashed the Fifth sister’s throat...

Waking her sisters to fight for her on Dathomir never felt like that. It was an act of love - done knowing her kin would fight for her, for their home, to avenge their deaths. The bond between sisters was eternal. Yesterday, she possessed bodies she had no relation to, preyed on them.

Cal was right. The dagger changed her. It gave her power but turned her into someone she didn’t want to be. She never considered the consequences of her actions before she met him; not like this. A part of her wants to hate him for it but she can’t.

Merrin wipes a lone tear from the crook of her eye. Everything’s been so confusing since she left Dathomir. The only thing that makes sense is Cal - without his friendship, she’s lost. Maybe it was best to return to Dathomir; to stop pretending another life could be for her. She ought to shoulder the role of Mother, to take one of the brothers as her mate...

The sound of careful rapping of knuckles against her door wakes her from her thoughts. She raises to a sitting position.

“Come in.”

Cal opens the door and closes it behind him. Merrin has a sensation of her heart flattening at the look in his eyes; sad but resolute.

“I wanted to apologize,” he says, leaning against the door with his hands shoved down his pockets. “I’ve been thinking all night about what happened yesterday. I overreacted. You weren’t brought up to believe in the same things I was and I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that.”

Merrin sighs from the weight of a thousand planets falling from her shoulders.

“No, I have been thinking too. Although I don’t regret killing the Fifth sister, I should not have let my anger carry me. For a moment, I lost control, and it scared me too.”

He sits on her berth, facing her.

“I know you acted out of care. I just don’t want to lose you like Cere lost Trilla. Like I lost myself in that vision I had inside the tomb on Bogano.”

She’s speechless at his words. He was afraid of losing her? A bright feeling rises in her chest and in an impulse, she reaches to embrace him.

When they separate, Merrin’s acutely aware of how close they are in the small compartment. For reasons she’s not sure of, she has no wish to let go. His gaze dips to her lips and softens before he meets her eyes; how can such a small movement change the atmosphere in the room? Judging from the pink shade to his cheeks, Cal’s aware of it too.

Merrin’s pulled from the state of time stopping when Bosi pushes her arm, demanding attention. She smiles at the animal and pets her head.

When the bogling has had enough attention, Merrin twists to pull the dagger from the pouch by her hip and holds it in her open palms.

“I won’t use this in battle anymore. I will get rid of it and rely on my other talismans for magic. Some power is not worth having.”

Cal’s gaze wanders from the dagger to her eyes.

“Keep it, if you want. But if it made you lose control, perhaps not using it again is a good idea.”

Leaning over his knees, she opens the small cupboard by the berth and places the dagger inside, closing the drawer shut with a dry thump.

They meet gazes, smiling at their newfound trust.

“Hey,” he says, “do you have any plans for today?

Intrigued, she shakes her head.

“I’d like you to meet a friend of mine.”

* * *

Merrin gapes in awe, trying her best to restrain her impulse to run and hide. By the base of the largest tree she’s ever seen, according to Cal called The Origin Tree, a huge creature lands beside them with a deafening cry. It’s a bird; but also reptile-like, with great horns protruding from its head, a massive grey beak and grey feathers covering its otherwise white body. BD-1 greets the bird with a series of happy toots and bleeps.

The animal is magnificent; Merrin keeps her shoulders squared not to expose how her heart pounds against her ribs.

“This is your friend?”

“Yeah. She’s a Shyyyo bird. I met her the last time I was on Kashyyyk, looking for clues on the Holocron. She helped me escape one of the Inquisitors.”

Merrin approaches the bird in slow steps. The air vibrates with the creature’s rolling breath.

“She is amazing,” Merrin says. “You were right. It was worth the journey.”

He smiles. On their trip to get to the base of the Tree, they jumped several chasms, ran over a few jaw plants, and swam across a lake. Cal let her use his breather.

“I thought we could do more than just look at her,” Cal says, petting the feathers of the enormous bird’s wing.

“Like what?”

When she, a few minutes later, sits on the bird’s neck, Merrin unsure if she’s awake or if she’s dreaming.

The Shyyyo bird extends its wings. With a jerk, it jumps from the ground to set off for the skies. Merrin falls forward from the propulsion, grasping the large feathers of the bird’s neck to hold on for dear life. Cal darts a hand around her waist, steadying her with a light pull of the Force. Blinking away the tears from the speed of their flight, Merrin relaxes and takes in the sight before her.

The verdant green of Kashyyyk disappears behind streaks of balmy white as they rise above the clouds towards the top of the Origin Tree. The winds from the bird’s wings soar in Merrin’s ears. Excitement, mixed with a tinge of fear at how far they are above ground, rushes through her veins and has her smiling widely. She grasps the feathers with her clammy palms, sinking into Cal’s body behind her. BD-1 bleeps a series of chattering noises.

“I know, it’s as beautiful as the last time!” Cal says in a voice drowned by the winds.

In a corridor of leaves, like breaching a wave of green, the Shyyyo glides towards a platform-like shelter in the bark. It opens its wings to halt its velocity, landing with a cry. When it places its head onto the tree trunk, Merrin slides off its neck, as wobbly in her knees as when she descended the Mantis after her first flight through hyperspace.

“That was amazing,” she says when Cal joins her, BD-1 safely perched on his shoulders.

He pets the bird on her horns with a smile.

“I thought you might like it.”

Merrin gazes over the edge of the Tree, her stomach flopping at the sight of the world expanding under their feet. This must be how moons felt looking down on their planets.

“Look,” Cal nods towards the east where a vast forest scape expands to the horizon, interrupted by peaks of mountains dotted with snow. “This planet is amazing. There is so much of Kashyyyk the Empire hasn’t touched. The first time I came here, that sight filled me with hope.”

Merrin nods, overcome with the spectacular view. She peeks down the trunk of the Tree again.

“How are we going to get down?”

Cal smiles at the Shyyyo bird.

“I was thinking we could ask her for another ride. She can take us to the lower branches of the tree. From there, it’s an easy way back.

Merrin reaches out with her hand to stroke the beak of the bird. Its texture is hard like granite.

“Thank you, _Koroleva_ ,” she murmurs.

The bird exhales a soft sound and blinks, fixating Merrin with her gaze.

Cal tilts his head in curiosity.

“What does that mean?

“It means ‘Queen’. She is Mother of her clan, right?”

“I guess. She’s the last of her kind.”

Merrin’s lips fall open. She meets the gaze of the bird, staring into the yellow globule.

“She is alone? Like us?”

Cal nods, pressing his lips together.

“Yeah.”

The bird murmurs. The steady palpitations of her heart reverberate through the bark. They stay silent stroking her feathers, their hearts heavy in their chests. The sun casts its rays in spots through the boughs of the Tree, overseeing the scene in a silence only broken by the rustling of wind through the leaves.

“Cal,” Merrin says, deep in thought, “if she were to find another of her kind, a male… Would it be her duty to take him as her mate, to continue their species?”

“I don’t know…” he replies, “I’d think of it less as a duty and more as the way of nature.”

Merrin hums. She takes a step back when the bird raises her head from the tree and extends her wings with a trumpeting sound to the skies. A flock of smaller birds break from the branches and follow her in rising and falling waves.

Mesmerised by the sight, Merrin fails to notice how Cal ventures further into the tree to unpack his bag. He calls her name from a bit further into the natural platform, holding out a package in his hand. BD-1 beeps by her feet.

“Want something to eat?”

She smiles and takes a step towards him. The bark crunches underneath her feet.

They share a meal of a yellow root, round buns of mealbread, and fried fish that reminds Merrin of the Burra fish that swims the oceans of Dathomir. Cal’s brought a curious red drink with a fizzy feel in a container. He snorts in laughter when Merrin scrunches her nose at the carbonation. Despite the mishap, she enjoys the drink; it’s sweet and citrusy.

He asks what she liked to eat on Dathomir and widens his eyes when she tells him how fried swamp snake was one of her favourite dishes.

“You are doing it again,” she says.

“What?”

“Judging my culture on the basis of your own.”

He smiles and directs his gaze to the bark.

“Yeah, you’re right. Sorry.”

Her reproach was not seriously meant; she opens her mouth to say so but stops her words at the sight of his face, gazing out of the world below them, deep in thought. A soft gust of wind tousles his hair.

“I can’t stop thinking about what the Fifth sister said about the Jedi.”

Merrin nods.

“I also think about what she said about the Nightsisters, how we fell to vanity and pride. What do you think she meant?”

“I don’t know,” Cal frowns. “But it reminded me of something Malicos said - about the Jedi falling long before the purge. The vision of the Zeffo sage also dogs me, how dogma blinded them to the path of balance. I want to understand better, to -”

He stops at the tension in Merrin’s face.

“I’m sorry I brought Malicos up. Are you ok?”

“Yes.” She fidgets with one of the rings on her fingers. “I just feel ashamed that I let him manipulate me for all those years. I should have known better. Been stronger.”

“Don’t blame yourself for what happened. You were only a child, alone and traumatized, when he arrived on Dathomir. He’s the one who should be ashamed, using the Force to gain power as he did. It’s not the Jedi way.”

She manages a faint smile, filled with a soft feeling.

“I’m glad I met you and got to see other sides of the Jedi. You are different from Malicos. On my planet, we revere strength, and power. You have shown me that strength can lie in kindness and compassion.”

He blushes in a lopsided smile.

“I’m glad I’ve met you too. I’ll never forget the first time I saw you. Don’t take this wrong, but - you were kind of scary.”

She grins.

“I don’t take offense. It was my purpose to be frightening.”

“Not as frightening as that huge bat I fought on Dathomir, though.”

Merrin stares at Cal, wide-eyed. His smile dies at the expression on her face.

“What?”

“You entered Gorgara’s lair? You defeated her in battle?”

BD-1 whistles. Cal scratches at the back of his neck.

“I didn’t actually kill her. She died crashing into a cliff while trying to shake me off her hair. It was a lot less comfortable than riding the Shyyyo.”

He shifts weight at the intensity of her silent gaze.

“Many brothers have tried to defeat Gorgara,” she says slowly, “only to never return. If you were of my clan, the brothers would have considered you extremely powerful. Perhaps even more powerful than the sons of Mother.”

_I would have chosen you as my mate._

The thought leaps into her mind before she has a chance to stop it. Her mouth runs a little dry.

“I don’t mean to offend your culture,” he says, “but if killing Gorgana means becoming the leader of the nightbrothers, it’s not the kind of power I’d want.”

“The refusal of power is a strength.” She tries her best to collect her features not to reveal her thoughts. “It is why I chose to trust you.”

They don’t speak, full of words they are unable to express. BD-1 interrupts their silence with a bleep.

“Yeah,” Cal says, “we should pack up and head back before it gets dark. Let me call for our friend.”

By the edge of a branch, Cal puts his hands to his mouth and calls in a trumpeting sound. It takes a few minutes for the Shyyyo to answer his call. She rustles the leaves from the propulsion of her wings when she lands, snorting and exhaling a cry.

The ride down is even more thrilling than the ride up. Merrin has a feeling her insides are weightless as the bird plummets towards the ground from the dizzying height of the Origin Tree. The wind whistles in their ears. BD-1 shrieks from his position between them, wedged not to fall from the bird’s neck.

Landing on a thick branch on the lower levels of the Tree, the bird sinks her head and accepts their embrace of goodbye against her beak before she flies off, her cry echoing from above. Merrin watches the Shyyyo fly, awed by her beauty and of the experience of having flown her.

They start their march back to the Mantis; legging over winding branches of trees, jumping offshoots and dodging sprigs. Near the ground, rich scents of life envelop them; sprouts, budding flowers, small animals sprinting from twigs to leaves in chase of glistening insects. They encounter a few slyyygs and have to run from a few creeping Saavas, but nothing kills their good mood.

Facing a ravine where a river flows in frothing swirls underneath, Cal pulls a stringy vine to his hand, opens his arm and presses Merrin close as he swings them to the other side. She wraps her arms around his neck and squints at the wind that whooshes against their faces.

Arriving on the other side, none comments on the obvious; that she could easily have teleported over the ravine. Merrin turns her face from Cal not to reveal the warmth on her cheeks. She’s reminded of that day Cal returned to her domain on Dathomir in his search for the astrium, asking her to step back with a hard look of determination in his eyes. Cal is kind to his nature but there is an unyielding core in him that she admires.

Venturing further towards the Mantis, Merrin has an impulse. When Cal isn’t looking, she teleports to a thick branch and releases a cloud of spores from a mushroom onto his head.

“Hey!”

He brushes the spores from his hair and narrows his eyes with a smile, index finger lifted.

“You’re going to regret that!”

She returns the smile and teleports further ahead. A moment later, Cal’s gone, and she probes the surroundings, searching for a sign of him. A splotch erupts on her arm; a green bulb with a sticky inside falls onto the ground. Cal laughs from behind a bush of brackens.

Merrin squints in her best attempt at hiding the laughter bubbling in her.

“You -”

“My what?” He strides out from behind the greenery and tosses another bulb in his hand with a grin. “Go on, teach me some Dathomirian insults.”

“Ok. Milk drinker.”

Merrin smiles at Cal’s puzzled expression.

“It means that you are too dependent on your mother.”

“Ah. Right. I’m going to take that as a general insult and not directed specifically at me.”

They continue through the thicket, nearing the location of the Mantis. Its elongated fin juts into the sky, not a hundred meters from where they are.

“I’ve got one,” Cal says, “toad eater.”

“Rancor dung.”

“Ouch, good one. Ok, how about this? Nerfherder.”

Merrin pauses with a frown, her hands on her hips.

“What’s wrong with herding Nerfs, whatever they are?”

“Actually, I never really understood that insult.”

They mirror each other’s grins. BD-1 ejects a beep-boop sound, his eye directed at Cal who makes an aghast face.

“Ah, nah BD, that one’s really bad! Who taught you that word?”

BD-1 beeps. Merrin marvels at how the droid can sound embarrassed.

“Greez?” Cal says. “Oh yeah, I think I heard him mutter something like it at the carriers on Jakku…”

Merrin halts, putting her finger to her mouth at Cal who bumps into her. By the Mantis, Greez is standing with his hand outstretched, dangling an Orchidfern fruit in the air. Bosi yips beneath the treat, running in a tight circle.

“Sit!” Greez says.

Bosi sits on her fuzzy tail, her large eye gleaming.

“Good girl.” Greez hands Bosi the fruit and pets her head with a proud smile. She takes it with a shake to her tail and runs to a shaded spot under the Mantis to devour her reward.

Merrin and Cal exchange a glance, smiling.

“Oh - there you are!” Greez says when he notices them arriving. “Uh, how was your little field trip?” He scratches his sideburn with a look of someone caught.

“It was great,” Cal says, “did you make a friend while we were away?”

Greez scoffs and throws his hand forwards and down, refusing to meet their knowing smiles.

“Get inside the ship and stop your giggling. Cere and Mari want us to meet them at the old refinery tonight.”

* * *

Two standard hours later, they land at the refinery. Merrin enjoys the fresh scent of Blueblossom on her skin from using the fresher and feels better than she has since - she can’t remember since when.

Cere, Mari, Tarfful and his lieutenants greet them with a dinner at the guerilla headquarters. Mari interprets the growls and roars of her fellow soldiers and sends occasional warm glances at Cere that the old Jedi returns with an equal glow. The little animal gnawing at Merrin’s heartstrings shrivels to a speck of dust and dies.

After they have finished their stew of beans and an orange vegetable called pumpkin, Cere, Merrin and Cal traipse outside, leaning their arms against the railing of the terrace. A few flame beetles form a swirling dance of light in the thicket below, like small stars fallen to the ground.

“So,” Cere says, “I’ve decided to stay on Kashyyyk. I believe I can make a difference here - something good. I’ve been looking for a cause that allows me to stay closed off from the Force, and -” She glances inside the office where Greez guffaws at something Mari says, “- I think I have found it.”

Cere meets Cal’s gaze, interrupting his attempt at speaking with a smile.

“I’ll miss you too, but I believe you will do just fine without me.” She raises an eyebrow at them both. “Tarffull’s men found a stash of Imperial credits in Ashmead’s lock that we’ll distribute among us. Do you have any further plans, now that we have stalled at least one part of the Empire’s plans for controlling the Universe here on Kashyyyk?”

A hurt gleams in Cal’s eyes. He grasps the railing.

“Cere,” he says, “I know you wanted me to rebuild the Jedi Order. I might still do that but - I need to understand what it means to be a Jedi now that the Order no longer exists. I can’t repeat the mistakes of our predecessors, and I'm not even sure I understand what they were.”

Cere nods, her lips pressed into a line.

“A path forward, shaped by what we learn from past mistakes and from past certainty.”

“Yes. I need to learn more about how the Empire could rise despite the Jedi presence in the galaxy.”

Cere rubs her jaw with sadness in her eyes, staring below at the swarming flame beetles.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you much. My travels with Cordova cut us off from the Jedi Council and the schemes behind the fall of the Republic. To me, the Order seemed perfect, indestructible. I was wrong.”

She sighs.

“Before the purge, the obvious place to go for knowledge was the Jedi Archives on Coruscant. That’s impossible now; Coruscant is the capital of the Empire. It’s teeming with stormtroopers - going there would be like entering the maw of the Zalorian rock-lion. It’s suicide.”

She lifts her gaze to Cal.

“There is another place where you can go to. Somewhere you might get answers.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of canon divergence here: in this fic, Cere never told Cal about the Nightsisters collaborating with the Sith during the Clone Wars. 
> 
> [The Vorantikus](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Vorantikus)
> 
> “It puts some chest on your chest” is a quote from Iron Bull in the game Dragon Age: Inquisition.
> 
> [Mealbread](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mealbread)
> 
> [Burra fish](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Burra_fish)
> 
> [Orchidfern](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Kashyyyk_orchidfern)
> 
> [Blueblossom](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Blueblossom)
> 
> [the Zalorian rock-lion](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Zalorian_rock-lion)


	5. Dantooine

“Buckle up, kid. We’re about to land.”

Cal takes the jump seat. Greez drops the speed of the Mantis with a backwards motion of the repulsor handle at his head; the rolling space outside solidifies to stripes before it transforms into distant stars and impenetrable darkness. Below hovers a planet colored by a mosaic of green forests, yellow field lands and blue oceans, topped by swirling patterns of clouds.

Merrin leaves her place from the back of the cockpit to peer through the glass of the panel. Bosi jumps onto her shoulder with a squeak.

“Dantooine. Another forest planet?”

“Yeah,” Cal says, “but the flora isn’t as dramatic as on Kashyyyk. The planet’s main export is grain; people are primarily making their living through agriculture.”

“And what was it you were hoping to find on Dantooine?” Greez asks in a certain tone of voice as if expecting the answer ‘bales of hay and flies from cattle’.

“The remnants of a Jedi temple. Cere told me there’s a ruin near the Khoonda plains.”

“Well, I’m landing the Mantis near Dantoo town. We’d do best to avoid the starport in case the Empire gets nosy. You can find your ruin from there.”

“Alright.” Cal sends Greeze a warm gaze. “That was some great piloting through the Archeon pass before.”

“Ah,” Greez mutters, unable to hide his proud smirk, “it was nothing.”

“Thanks for flying us despite Cere leaving the crew.”

“I’m a pilot; it’s what I do,” Greez says. “Besides, I left my booze with her on Kashyyyk so she can expect me back soon!” He smiles with a sigh. “That’s how much I care for that old Jedi - she decided to settle on a jungle planet with nothing but nature and I’m still looking forward to go see her.”

Merrin places a hand on Cal’s shoulder.

“How do you feel about her leaving the crew? Are you ok?”

She tenses, unsure if her attempt at compassion is too much, or not enough.

“Yeah,” Cal says, “I’m ok. Cere was the first Jedi I met after Master Tapal; she gave me purpose and made me realize I’m not alone. But who would I be if I tried to dictate her life, opposing her wish to stay on Kashyyyk? She seemed happy.”

“She did.” Merrin’s features soften in a smile.

“Hey,” Greez casts a sideways glance at Merrin, “take your seat for landing. That goes for your animal too.”

* * *

Dantoo town rests by the intersection of three ridges that fall towards the glittering sea. A circular pond forms a natural centre point of the town where people stroll, feed curious birds with elongated beaks, and pass from the outskirts to the marketplace. Blueblossoms dot the grassed plains that stretch beyond the settlement, intersected by roads and winding rivers.

The crew of the Mantis arrive on Dantooine during a spring festival; musicians play and flags and bands ripple in the wind to dress Dantoo town in vivid colors of green, blue and red. The children wear festive robes and the men and women place garlands of flowers on their heads. Pack animals trumpet and snort, their trunks and legs painted in the same colors as the town.

Keeping watch for the few patrols of stormtroopers that oversee the festivities, Cal and Merrin sneak into the market place to look for vehicle traders. A child in a flower wreath crouches before Bosi and giggles as she pets the bogling’s fur, asking her mother if they can get one just like her. Merrin halts by a stand of spices and sweets, mesmerised by the heaps of red pistils and seeds, of blue sugar cubes and salty breadsticks.

Lifting her gaze, Merrin frowns at the realization that Cal is gone. She searches for him among the crowd, doing her best to tamper her worry. The sight of his sand-colored poncho by a stand further away fills her with relief.

“Cal,” she says, blinking at how BD-1 lets out a small shriek of surprise, “there’s a man leasing hoverbikes by the end of that street. What are you -”

“Great,” he says and fiddles with a package that he hides under his poncho, “let’s go.” Cal takes her arm and they traverse the street together, flanked by a skipping Bosi. Merrin glances behind her and catches the sight of colorful stones at the stand where she found him.

Reaching the vehicles stand, Merrin folds her arms on her chest, eyebrows raised at whatever Cal's hiding behind his poncho.

“Ok, I guess I didn’t handle that very subtly,” Cal says with a lopsided smile and brings the package out, small enough to fit in his hand. “I wanted it to be a surprise. It’s a gift. For you.”

Dumbstruck, Merrin stares at the wrapped package. A gift?

“Go on, open it. It’s not much of a surprise anymore, is it?”

BD-1 boops encouragingly.

She takes the package in her hand and carefully undoes the wrapping. Underneath lies a squared box made from thick paper, holding a necklace with stones in a delicate shade of yellow, see-through like murky water. Merrin lets out a breath in astonishment.

“I know this isn’t as valuable as the necklace you sold on Jakku,” Cal says, shifting on his feet, “but I thought of you when I saw it. It can’t replace the old one but -”

“Cal, this is Dathomir amber. Did you know the stones were from my planet when you bought it?”

His eyes go wide. BD-1 lets out a happy beep.

“No. But I’m glad I bought it now. I hope you like it.”

She stares into his eyes. He’ll never understand how much his gesture means to her. Merrin takes a step forwards to carefully press a kiss to his cheek. She reaches behind her neck to fasten the clasps of the necklace, her heart light in her chest. The weight of the center stone fits in the cavity between her collarbone, glistening from a ray of the sun. Cal’s face goes that lovely shade of red again like it did when the merchant in Cratertown called her his wife.

“It looks nice.”

A pair of stormtroopers march past, blaster rifles in hand. Cal pulls his hood further over his head and steers Merrin under the shade of a tent roof. They hide by the structure of the stand, waiting for the guards to vanish into the crowd before they relax again.

“Merrin,” Cal says, “This trip to the Jedi temple ruins, I need to do it alone - me and BD, that is. I want answers to what happened to my Order and it’s deeply... personal.”

She nods.

“I understand.”

“Thanks.” Cal smiles. “I’ll be back before sundown, I think.”

“Take your time. But if you’re not back in two standard days, I’m coming after you.”

He grins and bids her farewell, turning to the man that leases the hovercrafts. Grazing the stones of the necklace with the tips of her fingers, Merrin follows Cal with her gaze as he rushes towards the plains, leaving a trail of dust behind him. Bosi jumps onto her shoulders and lets out a whine.

* * *

Rushing through the Dantooine landscape, Cal takes a moment to admire the surroundings. The trees on this planet scatter over the plains like lone wanderers on their way towards the settlement. As if to compensate for their distance, the older trees have vast, bulbous trunks with boughs of leaves that shade the ground underneath and rustle in the mild winds.

Even if Cere hadn’t helped him tank the map to the ruins into BD’s system, Cal has no doubt he would have found the old Jedi temple on his own. He’s pulled in their direction, like following a string attached to his chest.

His cheek still tingles from the sensation of Merrin’s lips against his skin. He hadn’t anticipated that she would kiss him when he bought her the necklace. He’s glad he did.

Merrin’s on his mind more often than not lately, in ways that have changed from being grateful for having another ally and friend. The faint whiffs of Blueblossom from her skin have his pulse tripping over itself. He’s overcome by curious wishes to place a hand on the small on her back when she passes him, or to lean in and whisper in her ear to make her smile.

He refuses to be afraid of these feelings anymore. He’s still unsure of what they mean in relation to his path, but there is no need to rush. He has time to figure himself out.

After about an hour of speeding through the plains, Cal slows down at the sight of three, fin-shaped cliffs protruding from the ground. The cliffs are misty from the moist of a frothing waterfall that tumbles from a mountain to the west, it’s ridges covered in snow.

A shiver runs down his spine. The Jedi Enclave. This is where Darth Malak bombarded the Jedi thousands of years ago, killing hundreds of padawans. It’s where he stole the Holocrons that revealed other Jedi training facilities throughout the Galaxy.

History tended to repeat itself after disheartening patterns.

Crunching the stone of the ruins, Cal stiffens at a skittering noise. A pair of screeching insects, large like R2-units, attack him with serrated carapace to their legs. He pushes them away with a blow from the Force and ignites his lightsaber, slashing the first insect into an oozing yellow pulp. He pierces the exoskeleton of the other with his blade. BD-1 emits a whoop and scans the creatures.

“Laigreks. They’ve been here since the Jedi Civil War.”

The ruins open to a ground floor cracked and open with gaping holes to an underground level that’s hidden in darkness. Green Ivy and moss creep along with the structure of a once tiled wall, glistening from a falling ray of the sun. The stone floors, shadowed by the remains of a once-great door frame leading to a central courtyard, shows traces of encapsulated fossils of ocean-living animals with horn-like shells.

“Down here, BD.”

Cal finds a way to the lower level, jumping scattered remains of blasted pillars and balustrades. He holds his lightsaber above his head but lowers it when BD-1 emits a cone of light in front of them. As they advance further inside, squeezing through fallen blocks and jumping egg sacks, a few more Laigreks attack. Cal slices them down without much effort; it was clear the large insects had not yet met many natural enemies.

The hair on Cal’s arms stands on end. BD-1 jumps of Cal’s shoulders and runs to scan a large cylinder of fibreglass that lays half-erect against a mound of shattered stone. Cal reaches out to touch the memories of the tube with the Force.

He returns, frowning.

“They made clones in these. Droids operated them to insert the memories of the host into the clones, causing them to suffer from psychosis. It was cruel, and inhuman. I can’t believe the Jedi experimented with this kind of technology.”

A wave of anger raises through Cal. Throughout his childhood, Cal befriended the clones, talked to them every day on his way to training and during meals. It broke his heart to have to fight them after the execution of Order 66.

He leaves the cylinder, passing many more as he ventures further into the ruins. The scent of stone dust, mould, and moss invade his senses. He’s drawn to a corridor to his left, carefully stepping the sprawling pattern of cracked marble. The only sound heard is the faint whistle of the wind from above and his crunching footsteps in the dust.

A room opens before him, illuminated by a single ray of light that falls from a crack in the roof. Meter after meter of shelves lay in haphazard piles on the floor, once stacked with holobooks.

“We found it!”

Cere told him of the old Jedi Archives, located underneath an ancient landing platform. Cal steps over the remains of a large stone statue that once guarded this level, only to fall by the bombardment of the Sith. He lifts his gaze to an inscription on the wall, following the edges of the room in squiggly letters. It’s the Jedi code.

_There is no emotion, there is peace._  
_There is no ignorance, there is knowledge._  
_There is no passion, there is serenity._

The two last rows in the code, _there is no chaos, there is harmony,_ and _there is no death, there is the Force_ , lay scattered on the floor in broken pieces from a heavy blow. A reflected light, small like a pebble, attracts Cal’s gaze. He draws near a once sturdy bookshelf that is now green with mould and brittle like paper and pushes it to reach the gleam. The shelf crumbles onto the floor; behind it is a metal square. He rips is from the wall to reveal a small button. Over its oval shape, someone has engraved the words _Let there be no ignorance_ in an arch.

Cal presses the button. A hidden door slides open to reveal a rectangular chamber where the furthest wall is blasted into bits. In the center stands a container with a few lights functioning. BD-1 thrills and runs to the squared box.

“Do you think you can open it?”

BD-1 toots and scans the container. He extends his leg and tries to intercept the lock with his scomp link but the lid won’t budge. The droid coos in disappointment.

Cal takes a step closer.

“What’s this pattern on the lid?”

BD-1 jumps his shoulders. The tiles before them jumble in a disorganised and illogical pattern until a thread of insight loosens inside Cal’s head. He mentally grabs it, untangling the skein of thought.

“BD, I think I get it. Nine squares with nine different tiles. Each forms a predictable pattern, horizontally and vertically.” He holds a small tile with a swirl pattern to the faint light that falls from above. “But there are tiles missing.”

Scanning the floor, he searches for more of the tiles and finds one behind the container to their right. Towards the darkness, more tiles lay scattered, and Cal lifts his lightsaber to illuminate the ground before him. He stops with a gasp. The rest of the room is gone, sunken into a bottomless pit. Lifting his saber higher, Cal discerns the end of the crater and beyond it - the last tile!

“We have to get over there, BD.”

The droid beeps and lifts his eye beam towards the roof. Cal examines the remains of a wall, rugged to the surface. He smiles.

Climbing the container and performing a double jump, Cal runs across the wall towards the other side of the crater and jumps again, reaching to the edge and grasping it with a groan. The void beneath him echoes from a falling piece of marble. Heaving himself up on to the other side, Cal grabs the small tile with a ribbed pattern and performs his double jump sprint to return to the puzzle.

Placing the last tile onto the pattern, the container hums and shakes. It opens with a sucking sound to release a squared box floating in a swirl of green light.

“It’s a Holocron,” Cal says breathlessly. BD-1 whoops.

The Holocron emits the voice of an unknown man, deep and resonating.

“This is the Noetikon of Secrets - the holo diary of Bastila Shan. I retrieved it on Coruscant, as it was in risk of destruction by certain members of the Jedi Council - members who did not believe her life story should be saved nor shared. I, Gnost-Dural, am of a different opinion. To whoever may find this: I trust you were guided by a wish for the truth.”

Breathing steadily to calm his pulse, Cal opens the Holocron. It flashes in white before the image of a young woman appears. She has brown hair pinned on top of her head and bound at the nape of her neck. Her eyes are blue like the oceans of Kashyyyk. The more than two-thousand-year-old recordings of her voice crackles from the open cube.

_We’re back on Dantooine. The bond between us - that sensation that appeared after I used the force to save Revan’s life - it’s like nothing I’ve ever encountered before. I sense his emotions on a physical level. When he hurts, I hurt. When he smiles, I smile. I believe he reads my emotions. It’s unnerving - as if I’m naked before him -_

_Was it wrong to erase Revan’s memories? Why do I feel like I’ve betrayed him when I did it to save the Galaxy? I keep constant watch over his emotions to monitor whether he is at risk of falling back into the dark side, and that feels like a betrayal too. He belongs to the light side, why can’t the Council see that?_

_Every time we spar, we end up in a stalemate where he sends me a grin that makes me burn, like I’m hit by an incinerator. What is wrong with me?_

Shan’s diary continues with a few minutes of expressing her mix of rising affection and desire for Revan, and fear for the way her feelings conflicted with the Jedi code. There is a gap in time during where, Cal surmises from his knowledge of her history, she fell to the dark side. The recordings continue from Coruscant, where she speaks of her elation over her return to the light, the destruction over the Star Forge, and over her marriage with Revan that shortly ensued. She spends a few minutes describing her unyielding conviction of their decision, and their joint struggle against the Jedi Council who opposed their marriage.

_I understand now, that the Jedi way of non-attachment is a dogmatism, built from fear and a misplaced sense of superiority. I have emotion, I have passion, I am never ignorant. The more I love, the more connected I am with the Force. The more compassionate I am, the more I can serve those the Jedi should serve; those of little power, those in need of justice, those in need of hope. I fear the Jedi have become stale, proud, ruling from the position of elitism rather than being the peacekeepers the Galaxy needs. Love has not turned me, nor Revan, from the path; it has shone a beacon on our way and helped us tread it ever forwards._

The period of passion and conviction is short-lived. Cal knows the rest of her story. Revan left Shan, then pregnant with their son, to fight the True Sith Empire. Shan’s notes are at first mournful and bereft, full of anguish.

_The Force is cruel. It brings people together only to tear them apart._

As her son is born, Shan returns to her conviction and her notes are heartfelt and dignified.

_I don’t regret it. I don’t regret a second I spent with Revan. I have our son; the greatest gift the Force has given me. Like my husband, I will continue to fight for peace in the Galaxy, so that all children may grow up in peace, happy, and loved. Like our son is loved._

Cal closes the Holocron. The image of Bastila Shan fades and dies with a hum.

“Love didn’t turn her from the path,” Cal whispers, his heart full. BD-1 emits a curious coo.

“What do you think, BD?” Cal sends his droid a crooked smile. “Will loving someone else put me on the path to the dark side? Or is this fear of attachment part of what drove the Jedi towards intolerance and sectarianism?”

BD-1 beeps.

“Yeah,” Cal says in a sigh, “I still don’t have any definitive answers, least not about the situation before the purge, but the puzzle of what lead to the Jedi’s downfall has a few more pieces. What do you say we head back to the Mantis? I’d like to get back and see how Merrin’s doing.”

BD-1 thrills. They begin their ascent to the ground floor, the light from the scattered holes above illuminating their path.

“I’d like to tell her -” Cal places his hand on his neck, “- that I think she’s really nice. That it means the Galaxy to have a friend who understands me because she’s been through something like myself. And uh,” Cal’s cheeks turn pink, “I’d like to tell her that she’s really pretty. Can I tell her that? Master Cordova didn’t program you with any advice on how to tell a girl you like her, did he?”

BD-1 bloops in a falling tone.

“Yeah, that was a long shot.”

A blaster bolt shatters the stone of the wall by Cal’s hip. Pulse rising, he equips his saber and ignites the blade, the orange beam humming. Behind a fallen pillar of stone, two battle droids with blaster rifles step forwards.

“Well, well,” says a man behind the droids through the visor of his helmet, holding a metal shield and spinning a blaster gun on his finger. “Guess it’s my lucky day.”

* * *

Inside the Mantis, Merrin paces the galley, tapping the tips of her fingers against the necklace around her neck. Bosi follows her back and forth with her large, gleaming eyes.

“Eh, Merrin?” Greez asks from the sofa, peering from a holobook on Sabacc strategies. “You’ve been doing that for like, half an hour now. You ok?”

“Yes.”

“Ok. How about you give it a rest? It’s giving me a headache. Your boyfriend will be back soon, don’t worry.”

She stops, frowning in confusion.

“Cal is not a 'boy'.”

“No, It means - whatever,” Greez replies with a huff.

Shaking her head, Merrin climbs the small stairs to her nook. She catches the sound of Greez yelling at Bosi to quit chewing on his sofa. The bogling sprints to join her, sitting on top of the berth, her little naked legs sticking out from the edge.

Making room for the bogling, Merrin takes a step to the side and bumps her hip into the cabinet by the berth. The shelf opens and the Sith dagger falls on the floor with a rattling clink, catching the light from the lamp above in a flash of white. Merrin stares at the relic, the skin on her arms breaking out in goosebumps. Bosi squeaks.

Squatting, Merrin picks the dagger up, reluctantly relishing in the oily gleam of the glass. She goes still at a rising thought.

Cal wants the truth about his legacy, and he has gone to seek it. Did she not also seek the truth? The question that’s been burning in the back of her mind since she met Cal surfaces in bright clarity. If the Jedi didn’t murder her sisters, it must have been the Sith. No other group of people wielded lightsabers.

But why?

Did any of her sisters that left Dathomir before the massacre survive? If so, how can she find any knowledge of them?

Cal has done so much for her. Wasn’t there a way to help him, at the same time as seeking out the truth of her legacy? People in the Galaxy said the Nightsisters dealt with the dark side of the Force. Using that old prejudice, perhaps she could convince certain people to give her information?

Cere spoke of a Jedi archive on a planet that served as Imperial centre.

It’s time to be brave, like Cal. To help, as he has helped. She places the dagger inside the pouch by her hip, grabs her cloak and her Dathomirian jewellery, and leaves her room. Bosi tilts her head and yips.

“Stay here. I’ll be back soon.”

From his position on the sofa, Greez looks up from his book.

“Are you going out?”

Merrin puts her cloak over her shoulders.

“Yes. There’s something I have to do.”

“What?”

“Search for information. I know exactly where to get it.”

“Information about what? How long are you -” Greez falls silent as Merrin pulls the hood over her head and leaves. Bosi sits by the door, her front paws in the air and her whiskers trembling. She lets out a whine.

“Did she tell you to stay?” Greez says to the bogling. “Then you better -”

Bosi scurries out like an orange bolt. Greez sighs and lifts his four hands in the air.

“Nobody on this ship listens to me,” he mutters and picks up the holobook again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The Archeon pass](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Archeon_pass)
> 
> [Dathomir amber](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Dathomir_amber)
> 
> [The Jedi enclave](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jedi_Enclave)
> 
> [The Jedi Civil war](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jedi_Civil_War)
> 
> [Laigrek](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Laigrek)
> 
> Yes, Cal’s solving a sudoku puzzle :D
> 
> [The Noetikon of Secrets](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Noetikon_of_Secrets) Another play with canon: the Noetikon of secrets was never a holodiary but I wanted it to be for the sake of the plot. 
> 
> [Gnost-Dural](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Gnost-Dural)


	6. Coruscant

Surveying her surroundings through the crook of her eye, Merrin passes the marketplace on her way towards Dantoo town starport. Although she’s fairly certain no one knows her identity, nor her affiliation with the Mantis crew, she stays alert for any approaching stormtroopers. Summoning a concealment charm, she hides behind a stand of wickerwork when two guards march past.

At the port, people direct pack animals with sand-colored pelt towards trade ships, loading crates and barrels onto their galleys. A ship shaped like a large fish with heavy underbelly land at a designated platform, spreading a cloud of dust. The chatting of traders fills the air, mixing with the honks and lowings of cattle and the screech of a single Imperial TIE fighter flying past. Looking for a suitable craft, Merrin lifts a hand above her eyes to shade them from the sun that has passed the zenith.

She approaches a young Human pilot in a black shirt underneath a leather jacket, leaning against a cargo ship. Behind him stands a line of passengers boarding the ship to leave Dantooine.

“Is this ship headed to Coruscant?”

A grin spreads on the pilot’s face.

"Yep."

"Do you have room for one more passenger?"

“My ship’s always got room for pretty girls - especially if they have credits.”

Merrin pushes down a spark of irritation and pulls one of her golden rings off her finger.

“Will this do?”

The pilot scrutinizes the ring, whistling low.

“Heck yeah. Get inside, sweetie.”

“I need your ship to wait for me on Coruscant. I plan to stay there on important business for at least one standard day.”

The pilot squints, the flirty joviality from before gone.

“What are you, the Princess of Alderaan? I unload my cargo on Coruscant in the evening and leave the morning after. If you’re not back on the ship by then, I’m not staying for you. Got that straight?”

She restraints her impulse to send a bolt of ichor down his pants and nods, leaving to board the ship with the rest of the passengers.

She fails to notice Bosi, hiding behind a crate full of wheat flour. Whining, the little bogling gazes after the ship that lifts from the ground in a high-pitched whistle and breaks the atmosphere towards Coruscant.

Drifting through hyperspace, the soft motion of the cargo ship and the low conversations between the few passengers makes Merrin drift off in a light sleep. When she wakes, she casts a glance out of one of the small windows and exhales in awe. Before them hovers the ecumenopolis of the Imperial centre, its black surface intersected by red, white, and orange strings of light that mark the central travel nodes and -routes of the planet. She’s never seen anything like it. What must it be to live on a planet with constant artificial light and no nature?

Embarking the ship, Merrin has an impulse to put her hands over her ears to drown out the noises of passing hover vehicles and small ships that soar by in lanes, forming an intricate net over her head. The screeches and bleeps of droids drown the occasional honks of horns and shouts by workers and pilots, unpacking the cargo of thousands of ships. The night is cool, but the stars are barely visible because of the light pollution.

Merrin darts her gaze around, disoriented. How to find the Jedi archives?

“Remember what I said!” The pilot shouts from the cargo entry. “Be back tomorrow morning or you’ll have to pay someone else to take you back to Dantooine!”

She grants the pilot her most stone-faced expression and leaves the hangar.

It takes her an hour to find a ride. The first taxi-driver, a small creature with meaty extensions by his mouth and blue skin, babbles in a frightened gibberish when she asks for the Jedi archives. She has no better luck with the next one. The third driver, a human with a bald head and remaining strands of grey hair fastened by his neck look at her up and down with a frown.

“There are no Jedi’s left in the Galaxy, miss. The Empire declared them the enemy of the state. I can see you’re foreign so I’ll forgive you for asking but know that no one will help you find anything related to them.”

“Not even for this?”

She holds another of her golden rings in her hand - her last. The driver’s eyes go wide. He scans his gaze around them as if checking no one is eavesdropping on them.

“You’ll want to go to the Imperial Palace, miss. It used to be a Jedi temple. Heard they got an archive there, once. It ought to be a holo vault for the Empire now.”

She gives him the ring and opens the back door to his hover vehicle to get inside.

“Take me there, please.”

* * *

Cal inhales the air of the Jedi ruins slowly through his nose, falling into the Sorusu defensive stance.

“So it’s you again. When will the Haxion brood give up?”

“Less talking, more shooting.”

The bounty hunter fires a blast that Cal reflects with his saber, hitting one of the droids in the chest. The droid trembles with a rush of freed electricity from a slashed cable and marches towards Cal, firing more blasts that hit the remnants of the temple in whizzing bursts of stone.

Cal can’t reflect the blasts of three enemies at once. Groaning from a hit to the shoulder, he rushes the droid in a dash strike and slashes one of its arms. BD-1 jumps from his shoulders and releases his link arm to intercept the droid, which keeps it busy trying to shake the smaller droid off its head. Meanwhile, Cal pulls the bounty hunter to him in an attempt to spear him like a skewer on his blade but the small hunter falls back in a rush from the jetpack on his back. Cal twists to reflect the onslaught of blasts from the other droid but the bounty hunter hits him in the hip.

A spark of anger lits in his chest, hot and red. Cal returns to his breathing, falling back into the controlled stance from before and extinguishes the flame of wrath.

He is a Jedi. There is no passion in fighting, only survival.

BD-1 chatters a series of bleeps as the battle droid falls to the ground in a major malfunction. At the same moment, Cal leaps and slashes the other droid, rolling over its falling body to use it as a shield against the blasts from the bounty hunter.

Two down, one to go.

A rocket lands by his feet. He lifts from the ground in an arch, dropping his lightsaber. The impact has his ears ring and his eyes water from the thick smoke.

“That’s for ruining my droids!” The hunter yells somewhere above Cal.

Closing his eyes, Cal calls for his saber. His arm hurt, he’s going to need a stim. But first…

The hunter approaches slowly, blaster lifted. “Goodbye, Jedi,” he says in a surprisingly soft tone.

The lightsaber rushes to Cal’s hand, dispersing the smoke. Cal throws the saber, decapitating the hunter in the forceful blow. The bounty hunter’s rifle falls to the ground, his limp body following to meet the ground in a thud.

Cal catches the returning blade and gets up on his feet with a groan.

“BD, stim,” he says in a strained voice. Once he injects the syringe into his blood, the burning pain from where the blasters hit him vane like faded bruises. One of the battle droids speaks inarticulate nonsense, repeating the mission in a warped up tone of voice from malfunctioning speaker wiring. Sparks fly from his cut off arm.

“BD,” Cal says, “can you intercept this one to give it new orders?”

BD-1 whistles in affirmation.

“Good. Make it return to the Haxion brood and tell them that the target has been eliminated.”

BD-1 extends his leg and frizzes a fuse by the battle droid’s neck. It stops it incessant chattering, repeating the phrase “the target has been eliminated.”

Rising to its feet in a whine to its joints, the droid turns its back to them and leaves.

Cal sighs.

“I hope that’ll give us a bit of rest from those guys, for a while at least. C’mon, BD.”

The little droid jumps his shoulders and they climb their way up from the lower level of the former Jedi temple to meet the waning light of dusk outside. Before mounting his speeder bike to return to the Mantis, Cal takes a moment to gaze over the ruins. His mind wanders to Cere, to any other surviving Jedi, and to the small enclaves of resistance that surely exists throughout the Galaxy.

“Maybe one day, this place can act as a Jedi headquarters again. Until then, I hope it gets to rest in peace.”

BD-1 thrills.

“Let’s go.”

Cal places the helmet over his head, holds BD-1 close, and revs up the bike.

When Cal reaches the yellow body of the Mantis, a cold shiver runs down his spine. He can’t explain it, but something feels wrong. Bosi meets him, jumping at his side and yipping like she’s gone mad.

Cal searches for Merrin the second he enters the galley of the ship, his chest tightening at the empty space on the sofa where he’d hoped to find her. Greez stands by the small cooking compartment, holding a Jogan fruit in his hand.

“Where’s Merrin?”

“Well, hello to you too,” Greez says and continues peeling the fruit. “She left. Said she had to ‘search for some information’.”

“What information? When?”

“She didn’t tell me!” Greez lifts his four arms, a purple peel of the fruit falling to the floor. “She left about two hours ago!”

Bosi jumps onto Cal’s shoulders. He flinches. The bogling yips and whines, searching for his gaze.

BD-1 whoops by Cal’s feet.

“She wants us to follow her?”

BD-1 affirms in a beep.

Bosi jumps from his shoulders and dashes outside. Cal rushes after her, BD-1 jumping onto his shoulders.

Greez mutters something inarticulate and takes a bite of the fruit with a shake to his head.

Cal follows Bosi past the market to the starport. The stars twinkle cold over their heads and the stench from a pile of manure from one of the pack animals has Cal’s guts churning. He accidentally bumps into a human farmer who shouts obscenities his way.

At the starport, Bosi stops on a landing platform, jumping up and down and whimpering.

“This is where she left?”

The bogling yips.

Cal catches the arm of a passing starport worker.

“Wha-” the worker says, the crate she’s carrying wobbling in her arms.

“The ship that leaves from this platform. Where does it go?”

“Final destination Coruscant.” The worker jerks her arm free from Cal’s grasp, walking away with a glare.

A cold spike rushes through Cal. He clenches his hands into fists and runs back to the Mantis.

“Greez!” Cal shouts as he rushes inside the ship and takes three long strides past the holomap to reach the cockpit. “Merrin’s taken a trade ship to Coruscant. We have to go after her.”

“Coruscant?” Greez says, his grey complexion turning white, “what in all Sarlacc pits does she wanna do there?”

Cal stares into the air, his mind trying to connect the dots of what he knows about her departure.

“Search for information…” His eyes widen. “Greez, she’s trying to find the Jedi archives. It's the only place where she might find out more about what happened on Dathomir!”

He taps his palm against his forehead.

“Why haven’t I helped her find out more about the massacre of her sisters? I’ve just taken her to places important to me.”

“We should go, kid,” Greez says and flips a few switches, preparing for liftoff. “If she gets into trouble on Coruscant, you won’t have the chance to tell her you’re sorry to her face.”

BD-1 coos in a sad note.

The Mantis starts with a hum. Greez indicates with his head to the seat beside him.

“Get seated. We’re going straight away.”

* * *

After at least an hour of twists and turns through the Coruscant traffic lanes, Merrin’s hover taxi lands in front of a looming building. Its exterior is colored red by the setting sun and illuminated by spotlights from the ground. The architecture reminds her of the laboratory on Kashyyyk; a center structure flanked by geometrical constructions, standing on top of vast stone ground, but immensely larger.

Merrin prepares for her task. She repeats the story she has made up while travelling to Coruscant, the one that will gain her the Sith’s trust. Grasping her talisman, she murmurs an incantation. Green swirls of light rise along her legs and spread up her arms.

“Hey!” the taxi driver shouts, “what are you do-”

Merrin teleports to the monumental port of the palace, sending two stormtroopers jumping with fright. They point their blaster rifles at her, shouting orders to reveal her identity.

“I am Nightsister Merrin of Dathomir. I have news on the Jedi called Cal Kestis - the one who killed the Ninth sister and stole a valuable Holocron. I request an audience with whoever is in charge of the Holocron vault, known as the former Jedi archives.”

For an awkward moment, the stormtroopers stare at her, their hands holding the blasters trembling, before one of them murmurs into a comm. He receives orders and turns back to her, pressing a pad that opens the Palace doors.

“Are you really one of those witches from Dathomir?” he says.

“Yes,” she deadpans, “and if you don’t hurry, I’ll turn you into a toad.”

The stormtrooper stiffens.

“Follow us,” he says in a voice that breaks.

The guards escort her through a vast entrance hall, adorned with drapes of the Imperial insignia. They pass soldiers in dark uniforms and black droids that bleeps litanies in binary. More stormtroopers meet them, marching through the western wing of the palace until they reach a massive door. One of the troopers presses a series of digits into a pad and with a sucking hiss, the panels open before them.

Merrin steps into a somber room, empty of furniture save for a wall of blinking computer systems.

Her stomach drops at the sound of heavy mechanical breathing.

* * *

Greez lands the Mantis at the Coruscant lower spaceport, the one closest to the Imperial Palace. He gestures at Cal who sprints out of the seat, BD-1 on one shoulder and Bosi on the other.

“Hey, kid! Be careful out there. And - bring her back, ok? She might be crazy but she’s part of the crew.”

Cal nods. He pulls the hood of his poncho over his head and leaves for the door at the galley, stepping out into the Coruscant night.

The air is crisp against his face, sending a chill down his arms. The surrounding cityscape blinks, toots, beeps and glitters colors, sounds and light, disorienting him for a moment. Speeding hover vehicles, shipping people in various shapes and forms, crisscross the sky above. How to find his way in this maze of skyscrapers and strobing light? Bosi hisses at a passing Chagrian with elongated horns and red eyes, flanked by an armed Togruta that hisses back.

BD-1 bleeps; a hover taxi rushes past. Cal hails one to his side, asking for the direction of the Imperial Palace. Paying the required amount, and a bit extra for the droid and the ‘whatever-that-animal-is’, he is off towards the heart of the Ecumenopolis.

 _I’m coming, Merrin._ He wills her to hear him. _Hang on._

* * *

The Sith lord towers over Merrin, his broad shoulders covered in a black mantle and his helmet casting a shadow over her face. Her fingers go numb from fear but she controls her emotions, lifting her chin to face him.

“Nightsister Merrin of Dathomir,” the Sith Lord says. The dark note of his voice rattles the ribs in her chest. “I am Darth Vader. I was told you have information on the Jedi that attacked the fortress on the moon Nur - the one who escaped with a very valuable Holocron.”

“Yes. I found him, delirious and weak, on my planet after his ship crashed. My brothers and I killed him. He was wearing this.”

Merrin presents him the dagger. The blade gleams in her hands. Vader tilts his helmet down and to her face again.

“A Shikkar dagger. Only those well-versed in the dark ways of the Force can wield it.”

“Perhaps it was what drove him mad.”

Vader reaches out with his gloved hand.

“The Emperor will be pleased to have this back.”

She takes a step back, holding the dagger behind her back.

“No. I came here to exchange information, not to bring the Emperor gifts. Give me what I want, and I will give you the dagger.”

Vader’s breathing fills her ears.

“Do you have the Holocron?”

This will be her most crucial moment. She mustn't reveal her lie by letting her voice shake or her gaze falter.

“No. The Jedi destroyed it. I found the pieces and interrogated him about it.”

Another long silence stretches before them where the soaring of blood in her ears overrides his breathing.

“I was surprised by your visit,” he says. “According to the legends, the Nightsisters of Dathomir were wiped out.”

“I survived,” she says, “now, will you listen to my demand?”

She expects him to ask her what she wants. His next words fall over her like a wave of ice.

“You are brave, Nightsister, but you are not wise. I received reports from Jakku where two people raided the Emperor’s observatory and stole a Sith artefact. Rumors told a Jedi landed at Cratertown the same day, accompanied by a Zabrak woman. I have reason to believe you were also involved in the destruction of the laboratory on Kashyyyk merely a few days ago. I did not expect that you would walk into my grasp of your own will.”

A shower of fear washes over her, prickling the hairs on her neck.

Merrin fights an urge to slap herself. Of course. How could she be so stupid to think that she could fool this man, a Sith Lord? Her heart pounds in her chest. Anticipating the roar of Vader’s lightsaber, Merrin holds her breath.

He takes a step closer and thrusts his index finger into her shoulder. Her muscles turn liquid from terror.

“What brought you to Coruscant? What is your scheme?”

With the last speck of defiance in her, she fixates her gaze into the eyes of his mask.

“I want to know why the Sith massacred my people. And… I want to know the truth about the fall of the Jedi.”

He straightens, his mechanical breath wheezing.

“The truth. Yes. I will show you the truth.”

To her surprise, he doesn’t smash her to the ground with his mechanical fist but passes her, striding towards the sliding door. The hem of his mantle flap against her leg.

“Follow me.”

Flanked by four stormtroopers, they enter a corridor that opens to a maze of pathways and turns, guarded by more troopers. Blinking panels cover the inner walls of the temple, casting light over passing servant droids. Taking random directions either to the right or to the left, they climb stairs and marches past a great window frame overlooking the lights of the city-planet outside. The rustle of the trooper’s armor follows her in a steadfast pattern over the weighty breath of Vader. An increasing unease fills Merrin like acid.

Where are they taking her?

Lord Vader brushes his hand against the front of a two-panel door, the whoosh of an open room inside lifting a few strands of her hair as it slides open. They enter an oval room, opening to a dark shaft that stretches beyond eyesight. A gigantic tube filled with Holocrons, holobooks, and old-fashioned books of leather and paper; something Merrin has never seen before, stretches all the way to the ceiling. A round bailey, floating above a chasm that falls into blinding darkness, holds the library interior and its many items.

Vader lifts his masked face to the collection of data above.

“This is the Holocron vault. What you see are the recordings of the history of the Empire, tracing the inevitable fall of the Republic, its impotent rule and the necessity of another system. In here, you may find the books that tell of your planet’s entanglement with the Sith that predates the Clone wars. Your Mother traded the secrets of your magick to the Emperor before he rose to power, and offered him her son.”

A chill wanders down Merrin’s spine. She pushes the rising grief from his words away with a flame of anger.

“You lie. He stole her son from her!”

Vader summons a Holocron, opening it to reveal footage of a Nightsister with tattoos by the crooks of her mouth and eyes.

“He is not the only child of Dathomir she gave to the dark side of the Force. Your mother offered one of your sisters, Ventress, and Maul’s brother Opress, to Sith lords and criminals to serve as slaves and assassins. Today, they are all dead.”

Merrin swallows, her throat thick with tears. Her hands tremble.

“Your Mother,” Vader continues, “with the help of her son, tried to defeat Count Dooku - one of the most powerful Sith to ever have existed. She died, and because of her pride, her sons and the rest of the sisters have perished with her. All, except you.”

Merrin closes her eyes, exhaling in a shaking breath. Everything inside her hurts. The hope of finding survivors from her clan she’s harbored in her heart dies, like an extinguished spark. 

“What about the Jedi?” She asks, opening her eyes to gaze into Vaders dark mask.

“The Jedi opposed the rise of our rule, blind to its purpose. The Galaxy was fraught with chaos, and imbalance. Without the Jedi, order can be enforced through the might of the Empire.”

“The Empire murders and enslaves people throughout the Galaxy!" She screams. "What rule can justify such cruelty?”

Vader lifts a fist and shakes it.

“The one that honors the true purpose of the Force. Surely you understand, _Nightsister_. Your rule served the purpose of your magick - another dark outlet of the Force. You have always felt it in yourself; it is why the Shikkar dagger called to you.”

He takes a step forward and extends a gloved hand.

“You have learned the truth. The path of the Nightsisters has always run alongside that of the Sith. Join the Empire, and you will accomplish what your Mother could not.”

Her heart pounding in her chest, Merrin shakes her head and takes a step from his hand.

“No. I've met someone who has taught me about the Force. He has taught me about valor, and compassion, and fortitude. I want to be like him, and he is nothing like you. I am nothing like you.”

Breathing harshly, Vader sinks his hand, the leather of his glove straining from his fist.

“There is no place in the Galaxy for those who do not accept the truth.”

Merrin gasps; an invisible force freezes her to the spot, her attempts at moving futile. Her throat constricts and the lack of oxygen makes her head swim.

He angles his helmeted head to the troopers at his side.

“Aim your weapons.”

The soldiers obey. Merrin musters all her willpower into breaking free -

“Do not try any of your tricks, Nightsister.” Vader’s helmet flashes from a blinking light. “You are powerless in this temple.”

A voice reaches them from a platform above.

“She’s never powerless. And neither am I.”

Cal jumps from a ventilation passage and jumps onto the platform, his lightsaber ignited and BD-1 bleeping on his shoulders. Bosi lands beside him, hissing at Vader with her fangs exposed.

Cal throws his saber at the troopers to Vader’s right. In one blow, he takes them down, reflecting the blasts from the remaining troopers with the returning blade.

The invisible shackles binding her weakens. Merrin rips loose and summons a bolt of ichor landing on the third trooper’s neck, sending him screaming and falling over the edge of the platform, his armor oozing with green fumes.

The triumph the fills her at the sight dies like an extinguished flame when an invisible force lifts her Cal from the floor. Her every joint scream in agony. She stretches her neck and grits her teeth. In the crook of her eye, she catches the sight of the last surviving stormtrooper, aiming his blaster at her.

Bosi jumps onto his face in an orange whizz. The trooper staggers backwards with a surprised yell; the blast from his weapon darts towards the roof. BD-1 rushes to his feet. The droid ignites his scomp link and sends a rush of electricity through the armor of the trooper who lurches towards the edge of the platform, twitching. Bosi skips from his helmet onto the platform as he careens down the shaft with a dwindling cry.

Vader makes a gesture with his hand. BD-1 and Bosi stiffen, propelled through the air towards the edge of the platform. Bosi screams, her naked legs twitching.

“No!” Cal groans and reaches out with his hand. The velocity of BD-1 and Bosi’s flight through the air decelerates. BD-1 extends a hook and claws into the metal of the platform, sending sparks raining from the effort of holding on.

The strain it too much. Bosi and BD-1 slide over the edge, the bogling's eyes blank and unseeing as she tumbles into the darkness.

“No,” Merrin whispers, unwilling to accept what she just witnessed. BD-1 heaves himself up from the edge of the platform with a panicked bleep, the beam from his eye reaching into the vast darkness below and the lights of his panel fading.

Merrin jolts her gaze to Cal who’s straining in the air, his body held in a tight arc. He’s gasping for air and a stream of blood flows from his nose.

“Stop!” She screams, her eyes filled with tears.

To her surprise, Vader lowers his hand. They fall to the ground in low thuds. Merrin scrambles to her feet and rushes to Cal who remains still, eyes closed. She lands by his side, shielding his body with hers. BD-1 jumps her shoulder with a rapid chatter, his eye fixated on Vader.

The Sith observes them, helmet tilted in a curious gaze. The wheeze of his breath rises and falls, a sound she knows will haunt her nightmares.

“You have chosen the object of your affection poorly,” he says. “There is no place for love in the life of a Jedi.”

She raises her head, her cheeks gleaming with tears.

“There is a hole in you. I can sense it; like a chasm of guilt, and sorrow. You use it to fuel your wrath. What happened? Who did you lose?”

The Sith does not move. A faint gust of wind from the vents shifts the mantle by his feet.

From nowhere, Merrin is overcome by an image of a woman, kneeling on the soil of land like that of Dathomir. Her hair is dark and her body is round, heavy with a child. The wind blows hot against her cheeks and a violent pressure against her throat prevents the air to reach her lungs. The lack of oxygen color her eyes red. Her heart radiates bottomless pain.

Merrin returns to the oval-shaped library, gasping as if it were she that was being strangled.

“You - you killed her,” she croaks, “You killed your pregnant wife.”

“Like you, she closed her eyes to the truth, “Vader says, his somber voice gaining a darker note. “It is time for you to die, and for your pagan magick to come to an end. Like the Jedi, the era of Nightsisters is over.”

She wills her lungs to inhale slowly, in and out. Concentrating, she stands on her feet and lifts the dagger from the small satchel by her hip to hover in the air before them. The blade shimmers in fluorescent light and small beams extend from its edges like tiny, exploding stars.

The mask of Darth Vader glows by the light of the lifted blade.

“The Nightsisters will never end,” she says, voice hard, “and neither will the Jedi. We will return, and the Empire will fall.”

Through a mind blast, she shatters the dagger in thousands of glittering shards. Vader repels the onslaught of broken pieces with a movement of his hand, taking a step back. The brief moment he loses focus is all she needs. Merrin leaps, diving onto Cal’s body and with a hand grasping BD-1’s leg, she rolls them off the edge of the platform.

The wind from their fall down the shaft forces more tears to her eyes. Her lungs constrict from the velocity, tumbling into the void below in a blinding speed. BD-1 shrieks. Reaching out with her hand towards the depth, she grits her teeth and commands the soil underneath to obey her.

Something beneath them cracks. Morsels of earth fly around their bodies, propelling into the air. Concentrating, Merrin continues her silent command. A wave reaches for them from below, filling the air with the sour tang of uprooted soil, of broken roots and pieces of clay. They land into a peak of dirt that stops the velocity of their flight, cushioning their bodies to land with a soft bounce. Merrin rolls, taking Cal with her, and with a last push of her mind, she steers the tsunami of dirt from their direction. The wave of soil lands beside them in a violent thump.

Panting, Merrin searches Cal’s face for signs of life.

“Cal?”

She reaches for him, brushing the dirt that clings to the fine hairs of his face and clasping her hands around his shoulders.

“Cal, wake up.”

His closed eyelids are still, his lashes full of dirt.

BD-1 jumps from the heap of soil, shaking to rid himself of a broken twig on his back, and runs to them with a series of worrying beeps.

Merrin’s voice shakes. A warm stream of blood from a wound on her forehead runs past her temple but she ignores it.

“BD, stim!”

The droid opens his compartment and flings her a syringe. She injects it into Cal’s bicep, observing his face for any reaction.

“Another.”

She inserts the next stim canister into his other shoulder. A rapid movement erupts underneath his eyelids.

She places her head on his chest. His heart is beating, faintly but steadily. Lifting her head, she caresses his cheek, swallowing thickly.

“Cal,” she whispers, “please wake up.”

BD-1 pokes Cal’s hand with a sad “woo”. He jumps when the hand twitches, his panel flickering. Cal opens his eyes, squinting, and lets out a moan.

“... Merrin?”

A wave of relief washes over her. She smiles and exhales a shaky breath.

“Yes, it’s me. We survived. We’re survivors, remember?”

BD-1 dances and sings in happy toots.

Visible through the faint beam of light that reaches them from above, Cal’s face soften in a smile. It’s the best thing Merrin’s seen in her entire life.

* * *

They find a way out of the palace underground. Cloaked by her invisibility spell, they make it to the Mantis undetected and leave Coruscant that very night, penetrating the artificially lit stratosphere before Greez pushes the ship onto the Correllian run hyper lane in a whoosh. Overlooking the shrinking city-planet, Merrin recites a prayer for a brave little friend buried in the soil underneath the Jedi temple.

This time, it’s Merrin’s turn to sit by Cal’s side, monitoring his recovery and making sure he has all he needs. Greez asks a few questions but leaves them mostly alone, sending her occasional looks, his bushy eyebrows raised.

Studying Cal’s sleeping features by the edge of his bed, Merrin comes to two realizations. One, that she loves Cal, more than anyone and anything she has loved before, and two, that she must return to Dathomir. The Nightsisters needs to live on and she is the only one capable of making that happen, despite how her conflicting realizations tear her heart in two.

What could she hope from staying with Cal? The words of Vader echoes in her ears. _There is no place for love in the life of a Jedi._ Staying together will only cause both of them more pain. She would always be a Nightsister, he always a Jedi. It was time for them to stop pretending anything else.

On the second day after their flight from Coruscant, Cal is up. He brews a cup of caf and sits on the sofa to her left. The resonant huffs of Greez’ snoring reach them from the cockpit where he rests, his body illuminated by the streaks of passing stars.

“I keep looking for Bosi,” Cal says, sighing into his cup. “I miss her.”

“I miss her too. I didn’t know it was possible to miss an animal this much.”

“She was our friend.”

Merrin fidgets with the bacta patch on her temple.

“She was.”

BD-1 coos, bending his legs to sink onto the sofa.

“I’m sorry for rushing off to Coruscant as I did,” Merrin says, shame burning her cheeks. “I wanted to search for the truth of the Nightsisters, as you searched for the truth of the Jedi.”

“I’m just glad you’re ok,” Cal says. “I’m sorry for not taking you there in the first place, and help you find the information you needed.”

“How did you get inside the palace?”

Cal nods at BD-1.

“BD intercepted a door that led to a room with a computer system. From there, Bosi found the ventilation corridors. I’m not sure how I knew how to find you… Something drew me to the room with the Holocrons.”

Silent, Merrin nods. Her pulse speeds in her veins. She needs to talk to Cal, tonight. There is nothing to gain from postponing this conversation.

“Cal.”

He darts a gaze to her, thumbing the handle of his caf cup.

“Yeah?”

“I was looking for answers in the old Jedi archives, and I got them. None of the sisters that left my home planet has survived. Mother has left for the spirit world to never come back. I am the only one who can pass on the legacy of the Nightsisters... I need to return to Dathomir.”

At the look in his eyes, she leans forwards, placing the foot she’s been sitting on onto the floor.

“I have learned so much fighting by your side, but it hasn’t changed who I am, and what I need to do. I was born into a role that I must shoulder. There was never a choice for me.”

Cal gains a wrinkle between his eyebrows as if he’s unwilling to accept her words.

“Cere told me once that as long as you’re alive, there’s always a choice. Is this what you want? You don’t have to obey the rules of your legacy if your heart lies somewhere else.”

Her heart, that he speaks of as if he knew her better than she knew herself, transforms to a stone that sinks into her stomach. She wills her voice not to shake.

“I’d like to think that was true. But If I continue my travels with you, I’ll feel like I’m escaping my duty, like a child trying to escape her chores. It wouldn’t be right.”

“So you’ll return and - take a mate?”

She closes her eyes. A faint wave of nausea land in her guts.

“I - I guess so.”

Cal stares into the floor of the Mantis. The muscles of his jaw tenses and his jugular bobs in a gulp.

“I thought that maybe you...”

“Maybe what?”

He rises from the sofa. BD-1 beeps but Cal asks him to stay put.

“Nevermind. I’ll tell Greez to change the coordinates. We should reach Dathomir in a few standard days.”

Despite the fact that his words are an affirmation of what she asked for, Merrin has to quell a protest rising in her throat. She orders her mouth shut and nods, hands clasped in her lap to hide how they are trembling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flight time between certain planets may have been written without much concern for accuracy due to plot reasons ;D
> 
> [ The Imperial Palace](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Imperial_Palace)
> 
> [The Jedi Archives](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jedi_Archives)
> 
> [Maul](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Maul) was alive at the time of the happenings of this fic, but Vader didn’t know that just like he didn’t know his and Padmés children were alive.


	7. A Path Forward

The Stinger Mantis breaches the atmosphere of Dathomir. Her long fin twists like a vertical arm that falls into place on top the hull before she lands onto the red cliffs with a low thud. The door to her galley opens to let out the last of her remaining crew, getting off the ship in slow steps as if hesitating to leave.

During the days it took them to get to Dathomir, Merrin isolated herself in her small room, only to come out to share meals taken with the others in a weighty silence. Greez’ every attempt to lift the mood of his two crew members fell flat. He gave up with a sigh, shaking his head at them both.

On the second day after they set course to Dathomir, Merrin found Cal on the sofa, strumming an instrument in his hands. He played a melancholy tune that hit her in the chest like an assaulting slyyyg. She turned and lay on her berth, fighting back frivolous tears.

Merrin steps onto the red soil of her home planet and cleanses her mind from any emotion but duty.

Greez shadows his eyes with one of his hands and scowls at the sight of the edifices carved in the stone further ahead.

“I can’t say I understand why you want to live in this place but -” he sends Merrin a pained gaze, “- I guess there’s a lot of things I don’t understand. I’ll miss ya, kid. I know I haven’t been the most trusting guy you’ve ever met but -”

Greez words muffle into Merrin’s embrace.

“Thank you, Greez. For everything.”

“Yeah, yeah…” He lets his gaze wander from Cal to Merrin, his shoulders sinking in a sigh. “I’ll leave you guys alone. I bet you have a few things to talk about. Take care, Merrin.”

With that, Greeze climbs the bridge and disappears into the Mantis.

A gust of wind tears at Cal’s Free Kashyyyk poncho. It’s her favourite - the leather on the collar brings out the deep ruby of his hair.

“I know I should be happy for you,” he says, “that you’ve found your path. I am - I just wish I didn’t have to say goodbye.”

He meets her gaze with a naked expression.

“I’m grateful that I’ve met you. You mean a lot to me, Merrin.”

Aching as if a lightsaber has run through her heart, Merrin takes one step forward and reaches for his arm, trying her best to ignore the way her hands shake.

“I’m grateful too, for everything we’ve gone through since we last left Dathomir. For everything you’ve taught me about the Force - about companionship, and kindness. Thank you for being who you are. I will never forget you.”

The hurt in his eyes has her fighting back tears.

“I’ll never forget you either.”

She’s taken aback when he draws her in for a hug and wraps his arms around her shoulders. She relaxes and encloses his midriff with her arms. They deserve a moment of closeness.

“What will you do?” She asks when she lets go. Her every cell screams in protest at the distance between them but she ignores the ache.

“The order wasn’t the flawless organisation I was brought up to believe in... But I will always be a Jedi. There have to be others out there in the galaxy, forming cells of resistance against the Empire. I’ll find them, and help them.”

“Dathomir will never serve the Sith again.”

He nods. The jut in his throat bobs. BD-1 beeps sadly by their feet, his camera eye directed at Merrin.

“I’ll miss you too, BD-1,” she says, squatting. She raises again to take a last look at the best friend she’s ever had.

“Goodbye, Cal.”

“May the Force be with you,” he replies in a thick voice.

“And with you.”

The wound in her heart bleeds. Her limbs are stale, but she takes a step back and turns to face her birthplace. The red soil of Dathomir has never appeared more like blood to her eyes.

Cal’s dwindling footsteps and the distant, dejected beep from BD-1 cracks her surface. A tear falls, hot and fat, onto her cheek. The Mantis lifts, swirling clay-colored dust swirl around her legs and flowing the loose fabric from her attire by her knees. The sonorous engines intensify into a high-pitched whoosh as the ship leaves her planet.

She wipes the tear from her cheek, inhales a deep breath and takes the first steps towards the settlement in the cliffs.

* * *

“So,” Greez says from the pilot’s seat, the darkness of space and small dots of stars gleaming behind him with Dathomir like a red globe in the distance. “Where do you wanna go? The Galaxy’s the limit!”

Cal sighs, lowering his gaze to the floor.

“I don’t know.”

 _I don’t care_ , his grief-addled mind adds, but he refrains from saying it out loud. His chest aches from the thought of making plans for where to go without Merrin, just when he was ready to accept his feelings for her.

BD-1 bleeps sadly by his feet.

“Look.” Greez shifts on his seat. “I’ve been through a couple of heartbreaks in my life. Well frankly I used to be the one to break hearts, a real lady-killer, can you blame me - with these looks?”

His attempt at lifting the mood falls flat. Greez’ smile wanes.

“All I’m saying is, I’m here if you wanna talk.”

Cal manages a twitch to his mouth.

“Thanks, Greez. Right now, I’d like to be alone and meditate but it feels good to know you care.”

Cal needs to sink into a calm spot of concentration lest he does something rash, like slashing the Potolli-weave fabric of the sofas with his lightsaber. Bastila Shan was right; the Force has a cruel way of joining people together and tearing them apart.

Should he have told Merrin about how he feels - tried harder to convince her to stay? Should he have rushed into the brother’s village and challenged them for the place by her side?

He doesn’t have the right to take her choice from her, nor to ask her to choose between him and her legacy, but Cal aches with a wish for things to be different.

He breathes slowly, in and out of his nostrils. The obstacles become the way, Master Tapal once taught him. Cal is willing to learn from his loss but at this moment, he needs to face it. Denial won’t take him on a path of acceptance.

“Do that.” Greez lifts a hand and snaps his fingers. “Hey, how about I take you to a bar later? We’re about a day’s ride from Yavin Prime - there’s a place on one of the moons that have the best drinks this side of the Mid rim!”

Cal snorts in sad laughter.

“You know what? That might be exactly what I need. Just give me a few hours to let me focus my mind.”

* * *

On Dathomir, an instinct drives Merrin towards the Tomb of Kujet. The cries of the Chirodactyl minors soars above her head and the dry earth crunches underneath her feet. Dathomir is familiar and yet novel; it is no longer all she knows but a place different from the billowing sand dunes of Jakku, from the noisy jungles of Kashyyyk, from the vast plains of Dantooine, and from the blinking lights of Coruscant. She is not the same person treading these cliffs as she was before she left.

Passing the Nightbrother village, her skin pricks at the realization that the houses and huts are empty. The only signs of life are the whisks of smoke from extinguished hearths and the skittering of boneback spiders among the urns and crates.

A lance of fear rushes through her. Has there been another massacre, another injustice done to her clan that she couldn’t prevent? She hastes towards the cliff that opens up to reveal the sight of the brothers gathering in a large mass in front of the Tomb. They are wearing their trial attires, adorned with markings and talismans and holding their weapons in hand.

One of the brothers notices her and lets out a cry that prompts the rest of her clan to turn. Lifting her gaze from their expectant faces, she squints at the outline of an unfamiliar - and yet so familiar - figure by the temple gates.

Merrin gasps. She surrounds herself with magick, teleporting to the bailey and appearing close enough to take one step to reach her Sister - her Sister -

The Nightsister has black hair and the Mother’s yellow eyes. She lifts her chin to scrutinize Merrin’s features with an air of haughty distance.

“Sister!” Merrin says and approaches with her hands outstretched. Her initial exhilaration melts into confusion - why didn’t her Sister greet her like a long-lost family member - why did she look at her like she’s facing an opponent in a trial?

Merrin lets her hands sink, her heart hardening like a stone in her chest. Of course. Because they _are_ opponents.

“Sister Merrin.” The older Nightsisters voice is hoarse and toneless. “The brothers have told me about you. You were the sole survivor of the massacre by the Jedi... only to leave in a ship with a man wielding a lightsaber.”

A spike of unease tightens a knot in Merrin’s stomach. Of course, her departure with Cal must have appeared like the ultimate betrayal to the brothers. But what did they know of her reasons? Of Cal?

“Perhaps the brothers also told you how they served another man with a lightsaber - a defected Jedi - before I challenged and killed him with the aid of the man whom I decided to leave with? It wasn’t the Jedi who slaughtered our people, Sister.”

A mumble spreads among the brothers, their gazes cast down and their fists clenched by their sides.

“If the Jedi did not kill our Sisters, then who?” the Sister asks.

“The Sith.”

The Sister nods, her gaze narrowed.

“I see the brothers were wrong,” Merrin continues, keeping her voice stable, “I was not the sole survivor of the massacre. I am glad to meet you, Sister, even though you may see me as a betrayer. I had no other reason for leaving Dathomir than to avenge my Sisters - my choice of companion was my own… I do not regret it, and neither will I justify it through poor excuses.”

The unknown Sister fixates Merrin with her yellow gaze.

“Do you remember me? You were very little when I left - perhaps no more than three rounds of the planet.”

Merrin shakes her head. The woman is vaguely familiar, but all Sisters were alike.

“I am Shelish. I have returned to Dathomir, having learned Mother is dead, seeking to take her place and to continue our legacy.”

“I have returned for the same reason.”

The crowd below exchanges excited whispers. The air fills with the rattles of bone charms winded along tattooed arms.

“No one else survived? llyana?”

Merrin shakes her head, swallowing thickly.

Shelish lifts her gaze and raises her voice for the Nightbrothers to hear.

“Only Dathomir herself can choose who will replace Mother Talzin. Tonight, Sister Merrin will prepare her descent into the catacombs to begin her journey to the sacred pools. The power that resides in the ichor will decide if she is worthy to rule our clan. I will grant her the right to go first.”

The brothers roar in unanimous approval and lift their weapons to the sky.

Shelish places a lingering gaze on Merrin’s clavicle.

“The design of your necklace - it was not made on Dathomir.”

Merrin keeps her face still despite the warmth that creeps up her neck.

“Come,” Shelish takes Merrin’s arm, signalling the temporary suspension of their competition and leads her towards the settlements in the cliff. “Join me for a meal. Tell me everything, and I will tell you my story as well.”

* * *

By the hearth, her belly filled with food and drink and her body warmed by the fire, Merrin tells Shelish of what happened to her after the massacre of their Sisters. She tells her of Malicos, of Cal, of their travels and how she learned of the final demise of Mother and her children. She omits her feelings for Cal and their private moments together from her story - her Sister’s occasional eye casts to her necklace tells Merrin Shelish knows what she needs to know.

Shelish tells her in exchange about her years on a moon in the Anoat sector where she befriended a pirate Wookiee. Merrin senses her sister is not sharing all the detail of her life either, and she does not pry.

The next morning, Merrin bathes in the warm pools outside the brother’s village and prepares for her task. In the sacred halls restricted for the Sisters, Shelish paints Merrin’s body in ochre-colored tattoos that wind up her limbs like ivy.

Outside, the sun blares cold in a halo through the mist. Merrin and Shelish enter the sacred port to the underground caverns that hold the pools of ichor at their core, the pools that sustain the magic of Dathomir. The brother’s chant in a circle around them, praying to the powers of the planet.

Wearing her hooded attire with the golden headband, Merrin leaves her Sister by the entrance to penetrate the winding corridors that lead to the heart of the mountain.

The scent of ichor grows stronger the further she ventures down. A slithering lizard passes her head, dropping a few morsels of stone in echoing thuds onto the floor. The heat from the core rises; Merrin wipes the sweat from her brow.

Slowly entering a wide cavern, expanding above in darkness from which tall stalactites reach for the ground, she squints at the curious green light that emanates from a large pool, bubbling with ichor.

Her magic sings. It flows through her veins like molten gold.

Getting closer, she reaches for the surface of the pool, hand trembling, until her palm touch the ichor -

A blast of light hits her. She gasps and closes her eyes. When she opens them, she gazes into an unfamiliar room, furnished with a small bed and a wicker chair standing on the corner of a weaved carpet. A beam of sunlight spills from a door slightly ajar on the opposite side of the room, the wooden walls intersected by beams that emanate a faint scent of resin.

Merrin blinks, unable to register what she’s seeing. A movement in the bed attracts her gaze. A little girl wearing a simple nightdress of white linen pushes the covers from her body and swings her pale legs towards the carpet underneath, heading towards the door. A cascade of auburn hair enframe her face and prevents Merrin from glimpsing her features.

The girl opens the door, allowing a shower of light fall into the room, and smiles at something outside.

Her heart filled to the brim, Merrin follows the girl to a wide-stretched terrace overlooking a forest scape below, with tall mountains specked by snow reflecting in the glittering waters of a lake. Animals she doesn’t know the name of grazes the grass by the waters where a flock of trumpeting birds swim, preening their white feathers.

Merrin draws in a breath. By the balustrade, squatting to face a happily tooting BD-1, is Cal. He’s different; fine lines appear by his eyes and he has a beard, the color a tone darker than his hair. He’s holding a small child by the hand, shaded by his face.

“Papa!”

The girl runs to him, grasping the fabric of his shirt and wrapping her arms around his neck.

“Hey there, sleepy,” he says and holds her, his voice filled with warmth.

The girl hides her face and giggles at the tickle from Cal’s beard. The smaller child releases Cal's hand to grab at the hem of the girl’s nightdress, wobbling from not yet having learned to walk. It’s a boy with the same color of hair as the girl, the exact color as Cal.

“Where’s mama?” The little girl asks.

As if sensing her presence, all turn their faces to Merrin. Her lips fall open and her eyes quiver with tears.

The children have her Zabrak skin, white like ivory, with the darker shade to their lips. They have her eyes and the shape of her nose.

She is pulled into the oval room by the pond in another blast of light. The recoil is so strong she falls on her behind, gasping. Staring into the ichor, she raises onto her feet, legs shaking and heart thundering in her chest. She turns towards the exit and sprints.

Outside, Shelish blinks as Merrin rushes out of the cavern and grasp at her hands.

“Sister!”

“I take it you saw the truth,” Shelish says, one eyebrow raised.

“I saw my future - I saw my children.”

Shelish tenses her jaw in a nod.

“So, it is you who will be Mother.”

“Not on Dathomir.” Merrin’s eyes shine. “I have to find Cal Kestis. I have to reach the Mantis. Help me, Sister.”

Shelish gains an expression of surprise before her mouth curves in a knowing smile. She raises her hand to graze Merrin’s necklace.

“What you saw is only one of many possible futures. It may not come true.”

“I know.”

“If it is what you want…”

The unfamiliar serenity from her vision still sweeps over Merrin’s brain like a layer of silk. She’s overcome by peace.

“It is.”

“Then you must pursue it - with the knowledge that you may never be able to return to Dathomir.”

Merrin swallows and nods.

“No dream can be fulfilled without cost.”

The sun falls over the cliff and sends a shadow over Shelish’s face. The shade deepens the yellow of her eyes.

“Take my ship. It’s at the Swamp of Sacrifice. Can you fly a spacecraft?”

Merrin takes a shaky breath, her every muscle ready to sprint.

“I’ll have to figure it out.”

* * *

Merrin shifts on the pilot’s seat of Shelish’s cruiser, small like an Imperial TIE fighter but with double turbines and a silver nose steering into space. The panels and lights around her emit a faint, monotone sound, assuring her everything functions normally.

Lifting from the red soil of Dathomir, Merrin did a few failed attempts at leaving the atmosphere, bobbing around in the air and coming dangerously close to crashing into the cliffs. She grasped the steering control, gritting her teeth, and pushed the ship beyond the blue line that separated the breathable air of her birth planet and the vast space, speckled with infinite dots.

Leaning forwards, Merrin peers into the darkness between the clusters of stars caught in a milky way, her heart sinking in her chest. The universe is infinite. How was she supposed to find Cal?

She stops her breathing at a thought.

The Force.

Today, the Force would not tear two people apart, but bring them together.

Clenching her hands into fists, Merrin closes her eyes and plunges into the darkness behind her lids, focussing her thoughts on a single demand:

_Find the Mantis._

Nothing happens. She screws her eyes shut and concentrates again.

After several heartbeats where desperation creeps into her veins, she blinks at a repeated bleep on a panel to her right. A green light pulses at a comm radio she’s failed to notice.

“Uh yeah, this is Captain Greez Dritus of the S-161 Stinger Mantis, what seems to be the problem?”

Her muscles frozen in incredulity, Merrin stares at the comm, catching Greez’ irritated next words.

“Look buddy, if you’re going to send out a distress signal, I suggest you answer the call -”

She lunges at the transmitter.

“Greez! It's Merrin! Where are you?”

“Merrin?” A frizzed bump through the comm tells her Greez drops something onto the floor of the Mantis at her voice. “What the - didn’t we leave you on Dathomir less than a standard day ago?”

She smiles through tears.

“I came back.”

“Merrin?”

Cal’s voice sends a strong burst of relief through her. She grasps the armrest of her seat so hard her knuckles whiten.

“Cal!”

“Merrin, where are you? Send us your coordinates and we’ll find you, I promise.”

The comm distorts his voice to a metallic buzz; she searches the panels before her and finds a flip switch with the label “transmit coordinates”. She flips it, reaching for the comm.

“Did you get it?”

“We did. We’re coming.”

She leans her head back onto her seat, hand over the smile that spreads on her face.

She’s coming home.

* * *

Less than three standard hours later, the comm buzzes in Merrin's hand.

“Merrin, Greez here. We can see your ship.”

She snaps her gaze to the cockpit window. The Mantis surges through space towards her ship, it’s vertical fin erect and its yellow tint contesting the sun.

An intense rush of happiness soars through her at the sight.

“I want to come to you.”

Greez scoffs.

“As much as I’d like that, we need to land somewhere. I can’t haul you inside the Mantis by sheer will -”

“But I can.”

Merrin stills at Cal’s voice, understanding his intention. She smiles.

“I’ll come to you.”

“Hey,” Greeze exclaims in the background, “what about your ship?”

“I don’t care about the ship.”

She unbuckles her safety belt and strides into the hull, taking a deep breath before she presses a button to slide the cargo door open. The roaring of two spaceship motors fills her ears. Outside, steered to fly beside her without crashing into her ship, the Mantis blocks the sight of the vast space with its many stars. Cal opens the side door. He catches her gaze with eyes that radiate determination like the many stars around them radiate their distant light.

She nods and places her feet on the edge of the cargo opening, steeling herself for the pull. Through the tangle of her hair flying before her eyes, she sees Cal reaching out with his hand and jerking it backwards.

She’s yanked through space by the Force, landing in the opening to the galley and pulled into the Mantis by Cal’s hands.

When they find their feet and the door behind them closes, he says her name, smiling in astonishment.

She jumps into him and wraps her arms around his neck. He takes a step back not to fall and lifts her, avoiding to trip over BD-1 who dances in a series of ecstatic thrills and beeps by their feet.

Cal puts her back onto the ship’s deck, his eyes shining.

“You came back.”

“Yes,” she says with a shrug and a smile. “I couldn’t be without Greez’ cooking.”

Cal laughs. Merrin has no intention of confusing him about her real reason for returning. She cups his face in her hands and brings their lips together, catching the sight of his wide-eyed expression before they melt into the kiss.

His hands lay firm on her waist. His lips are warm and soft as she always imagined they would be. He carefully angles his head not to bump their noses but otherwise, he keeps still as if he fears that she’ll disappear if he moves.

She breaks the kiss to utter the words she’s repeated in her mind since she boarded her sister’s ship.

“Cal, I made a mistake. I want your path to be mine, and mine to be yours. I will always be a Nightsister and you will always be a Jedi but we are free to find out what that means for ourselves.”

“I believe so too,” he says. “On Dantooine, I learned something. Emotion and attachment don’t have to be against the Jedi way.”

He smiles, caressing her cheek with his thumb. She grasps his wrist and looks him in the eye.

“On Dathomir, I ventured deep down in a system of caverns to reach the sacred pools. I saw something there. I know the answer to Cere’s question.”

“Which one?”

“The one about Trilla’s request. How to avenge the Jedi. And my Sisters.”

His gaze moves between her eyes, begging for her answer. Her heart soars from relief in knowing the path forward and being able to tread it.

She’s seen their possible future, but until that is achievable, they would have to continue the struggle for a better universe. They were still so young; the Galaxy was still at war, but they could grow and learn. Together.

“We will fight the Empire,” she says.” In time… our ultimate revenge will be a Galaxy where people can live in peace. Where children can play and laugh without the fear of being hunted, tortured, or killed. I saw it, Cal.”

Merrin hides her vision deep in her heart. One day, they might both be ready for her to share the full gist of it.

“It’s a future I can believe in,” she continues. “A future worth fighting for.”

“It is,” he says softly, “I believe in it too.”

Cal carefully leans his forehead against hers, stroking a strand of silver hair from her cheek.

“Ah, young love,” Greeze mumbles with a smile from his pilot’s seat before facing the universe outside, grasping the handle to the hyperdrive and pushing it forwards.

With a soft jerk, the Mantis drift into hyperspace, the people inside swallowed by the stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I commissioned the artwork by artist [Mikael Sol](https://www.instagram.com/mikaelsol_art/)! I think I especially love his take on Greez!
> 
> Thanks to everyone reading and engaging with me throughout this story - you are the best! I'm on [Tumblr](www.tumblr.com/namesonboats) and [Twitter](www.twitter.com/namesonboats). Come say hi!


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